Poet Profile

 

Lozan Yamolky is a Canadian citizen who migrated from Kurdistan —Present day Northern Iraq, in 1995 after spending over a year as asylum seeker in Turkey.

Born in Baghdad in 1972, Lozan is the fifth of eleven children; three boys and seven girls –one brother passed away in infancy.

Lozan is the author of I’m No Hero (Silver Bow Publishing 2016) and Counting Waves (Silver Bow Publishing 2017). She is dedicating this third poetry book to her teenage boys, Trey, 15 and Wyatt, 13. Lozan started reciting her poems for the first time in 2013 at The Holy Wow Poets Canada in Maple Ridge. She is a member of the Canadian Authors Association and presently the secretary of the Royal City Literary Arts Society. She works as a freelance interpreter.

In 2017, Lozan was commissioned to write a poem about the refugee experience to DaCapo Chamber Choir in Toronto. The event will feature her poem “I am here” in spring 2019.

Lozan was the recipient of a 2018 Distinguished Poet Award from WIN– Writers International Network Canada and was 3^rd place winner at the 2018 Tagore Festival (Peace Poems) contest. Since first sharing her poetry in 2013, she has featured in numerous poetry events throughout the Greater Vancouver area.

Her poems have been published in The Royal City Poets Anthologies (Silver Bow Publishing), The Royal City Literary Arts Society online magazine, Wordplay at Work, Creative Quills Ink Verse (North Vancouver), the 2018 Holy Wow Poets Anthology and a short story in the Celebrating Canada 150 and Culture Days From Far and Wide (Multicultural Creative Writing Collection 2017).

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Lozan Yamolky was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq in 1972. She is the fifth of eleven children, three boys, and seven girls. She recently traced and tested her DNA and found out she is of Armenian descent from her mother’s side and Kurdish from her father’s side.

While living in Western Iraq and in Baghdad, Lozan began writing in her early teens and mostly short sentences not knowing that such deeply felt words and short lines were called poetry until her uncle Serwan Yamolky inspired and encouraged her to not only keep writing but to stop destroying what she has written because she feared others would make fun of her writing about her personal feelings.

Her family left their homeland and managed to arrive in the capital of Turkey to seek asylum in 1994. She immigrated to Canada with her family in 1995. She has lived, studied, volunteered and worked in the Greater Vancouver area ever since. She is the mother of two boys from her previous marriage and happily married a second time and continues living in Vancouver. She works as a freelance interpreter and volunteers helping refugees and newcomers arriving in Canada.

Lozan believes peace is possible when we look beyond skin color, gender, place of origin, religious beliefs and political views. We can make peace when we allow ourselves to change our minds to gain knowledge as new information and new ideas come along. We need the courage to speak up, volunteer, donate and stand up in support of those whose rights have been taken away from them; because tomorrow we may be the ones marginalized and pointed at for being different and we may be persecuted with nobody to help us.

Lozan believes poetry heals and connects us. Poetry expresses when face-to-face conversations can’t convey our point of view sufficiently. Poetry brings a calm serenity to self that ultimately will bring peace to the world.