Mercenary English

Mercedes Eng is a teacher and writer in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territory. She is the author of Mercenary English (CUE Books), which explores the potential of documentary poetics. Her work has appeared in West Coast Line, Canada and Beyond, The Capilano Review, and Geist. Much of her creative writing is grounded in struggles for social justice in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. In 2014 she wrote a series of articles on poetry and gentrification in Vancouver for Jacket2, Penn University's online poetry magazine, and in 2012-2013, she wrote several articles for a community newspaper, The Downtown East. She has spoken at the DTES Writer's Jamboree at Carnegie Community Centre (April 2011) and lectured on visual representations of the missing and murdered women of Vancouver at Simon Fraser University (March 2011).