Artist and poet Fortner Anderson is known for his poetic performances, artist’s books, and unique installations. For 50 years, he has pursued his formalist and experimental work aimed at renewing and expanding poetic forms.
Among his poetic publications are reiterations (2022), an e-book whose content, comprising 24 sonnets, changes with each reading; Considerations (2021), a formalist text in the form of a Silver Age comic book; Points of Departure (2017), a collection of poems cast in bronze; and annunciations (2012), a poetic reinterpretation of the final minutes of the Columbia space shuttle disaster. In 2024, he published 100 Loglines, which contains 100 original plotlines for 100 different genres of feature films.
His latest project, 15 Beautiful Love Poems, a book engraved into a solid block of crystal, was launched in May 2025. He has presented his poems in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and throughout Europe. His performances and installations have been widely featured, notably at the Poesiefestival Berlin and the Festival Internazionale di Poesia di Genova (2025). In 2007, he received the La voix électrique Award for his lifetime achievement in the field of performance poetry, and in 2018, he received the Poésie dans la cité Award from the Conseil des arts de Montréal for his project with Geneviève Letarte, L’inventaire des faits en neuf lieux de Montréal un après-midi d’été.
Originally from the American Midwest, Fortner Anderson now lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada, where he hosts a weekly one-hour program on CKUT-FM titled Dromostexte, which features recordings of poetry and spoken word.
