Natalie Lim

communications by day,
poetry by night.

Natalie Lim (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian poet living on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Kwikwetlem Peoples (Burnaby, BC). Her debut full-length book of poetry, Elegy for Opportunity, was published by Wolsak & Wynn in 2025 and longlisted for the 2026 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She is also the author of a chapbook, arrhythmia (Rahila's Ghost Press, 2022).

Winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and Room Magazine’s Emerging Writer Award, her work has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry and elsewhere.

When she’s not writing poetry, you can find her playing video games, going for a run or working in communications at Simon Fraser University. You can see her full publication history here.

Praise for Elegy for Opportunity

“I recognize my own experience in her crisis at trying to hold two incompatible realities at once – one in which we aren’t worth saving from the disasters of our own making, another that bears every good and beautiful thing we’ve ever done.” - Molly Cross-Blanchard, for Quill & Quire (starred review!)

“The speaker confides in her readers as the poems are caught somewhere between private anecdotal experiences, and a larger worldview of climate crisis and shared human connectedness…The best poems in this collection are rich, multi-layered, and are what poetic communion–the subtle art of the emotional whisper, that bond or transference between poet and reader–is all about.” - Chris Banks, for The Woodlot

“Whereas Opportunity sent back over 1000 reports, Lim shares 44 poems with a connecting thread of the little rover that could, an anchoring key…She sets her mind to sorting what is worth keeping, small not-ornamental beauties but moments that make people worth saving." - Pearl Pirie, for periodicities

Contact

Want to get in touch? Send a note to hello@natalielim.ca, or fill out the following form.