Born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Canada, Nehassaiu deGannes also lived for several years in the United States where she attended university and currently pursues an acting career.

That nomadic life inspired many of her poems which can be found in Music for Exile, the title of her first book that is scheduled for release in early 2021.

“Toronto, where I lived for most of my childhood and teenage years and where my mother still lives, has held the UN designation of being the world’s most multicultural city, so for me cosmopolitan has always held this value — as a gathering place of differences, with each specific individual and cultural expression a valid pathway to the universal,” the New York-based deGannes said. “My collection lays claim to that view and there are poems about the many cities I’ve lived in: Philadelphia poems, Providence, Rhode Island poems, Toronto poems, as well as the Caribbean poems. I also write to give voice to the cities’ invisible citizens, those often erased from written historical records and by the newly gentrified gaze,” she added.

DeGannes has done more acting than writing in recent times. Her credits include Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Stratford Festival of Canada; Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel at Shakespeare and Company; Danai Gurira’s The Convert at Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Sarah Burgess’s Kings at Studio Theatre of DC.

Interestingly, deGannes was still in costume while appearing in Nottage’s award-winning SWEAT in Cleveland, Ohio, when she got the news that Tupelo Press in Massachusetts would publish her poems.

Born in Port of Spain, deGannes’ Caribbean roots are widespread. She also has family in Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and Guyana.

She migrated to Canada at age three but recalls maintaining ties to the region because her home in Toronto was distinctly Caribbean.

“Considering I left when I was three, my connection has always been one of both home space and exile — the deeply felt place of my origins but not a place I fully belonged each time I returned for a visit, hence the title of the collection,” she said. “I grew up very close to my grandmother, who lived in Dominica. She and my grandfather immigrated to Canada after losing their home to a hurricane. So, in addition to Toronto’s Caribbean Diaspora communities in which my parents were and my mother still is very much involved, my grandmother’s Canadian kitchen was my portal to the Caribbean. My most deeply felt connections are ancestral — born of my grandmother’s stories and the novels and poems of our great Caribbean writers.”

DeGannes earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from McGill University in Canada. She has a master’s in African American studies from Temple University in Pennsylvania, and a Masters in Fine Arts in Literary Arts from Brown University in Rhode Island where she developed an interest in acting.

In May, Nehassaiu deGannes made her film debut in Equal Standard, a drama starring Ice-T.