Growing into womanhood is difficult within the confines of an insular Mennonite colony. At 17, Maria Giesbrecht left everything she had ever known, fleeing her family and community with only $200 in her pocket. By making that leap, she was able to unravel a patriarchal and oppressive religious system, claiming a freedom rooted in her own choices and identity.
Born in Durango, Mexico, Giesbrecht is an award-winning poet now living near Guelph, Ont. It’s been less than a decade since she walked away from her conservative Mennonite roots, but she has already carved out a comfortable niche in the Canadian literary community.
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Her poems have appeared in the Literary Review of Canada, Narrative and Grain, and she won the 2025 Lesley Strutt Poetry Contest for a work titled “A poem about death and tomatoes.” Known online as “The Guelph Poet,” she boasts over 80,000 followers on Instagram.
A Little Feral, Giesbrecht’s debut poetry collection, offers a sparse, evocative body of work. Whether it’s a few exquisite lines or a narrative told in half a page, each piece explores Giesbrecht’s resistance to the patriarchy, both human and divine.
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In poems like “Church pregnancy,” she examines the role of church and holiness by taking us on an unexpected birth journey — not of a baby, but of a new kind of faith that is feminist, free and a little feral. A deity that is willing to sit with you in life’s never-ending rollercoaster of pleasure and pain.
In the book’s titular poem, Giesbrecht writes: “I didn’t know I loved God until he grated the black night into my bowl and didn’t flinch when I threw up a few stars.” I had to read those words over and over again until the visual came to life and embodied a familiar, comforting memory of a parent soothing a child’s pain without hesitation.
Giesbrecht doesn’t waste a single word, and while the slim collection can easily be read during your morning tea, I found myself meandering through the lines of my favourite poems, going back again to collect more wisdom.
Many of the poems in A Little Feral carry the texture and memory of rural living and wide-open skies, contrasted against the stifling heat of a father’s anger. In “Father leads marriage counselling in our living room,” she describes how he “opened his chest, letting a thousand hornets loose.”
Another poem, “Rats and stars,” begins with a domestic vision of her mother in the kitchen: “My mother used to turn leftovers into a whole dish with just lard and a little flour.” By the end of the poem, that simple meal has become a rich metaphor for life’s complex, nuanced truths.
I’ll be returning to my favourite pages, tea-stained and tear-stained, for many years to come.
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Brianna Bell is a journalist in Guelph, Ont. Her memoir, God Lover, will be released by Dundurn Press in 2027.
This story first appeared in Broadview’s July/August 2026 issue with the title “A Feral Faith.”
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