Steve Venright

Steve Venright (born September 16, 1961) is a Canadian poet, visual artist, photographer and entrepreneur. Born Steven Thomas Burton Wright in Sarnia, Ontario, he began writing under the anagram Stewart Venright at age seventeen before assuming the name by which he is known.

After moving to Toronto in the early '80s, Venright quickly integrated into a burgeoning experimental poetry scene. Venright is the author of five trade collections of poetry as well as numerous chapbooks and leaflets. His writing is characterized by compact forms, extraordinarily vivid, fantastic imagery and a frequently absurdist sense of humor. Also engaged in various forms of visual arts, including photography, collage and 'variegraphy', a term of the artist's own devising, Venright has exhibited his work in solo and group shows. His visual works also frequently appear in his books. As a photographer, he is perhaps best known for his portraits of many prominent Canadian writers.

Venright is also an entrepreneur, having created and managed Alter Sublime Neurotechnologies, Torpor Vigil Industries and TVI Soundworks. The former was a business devoted to the distribution and sale of therapeutic brainwave entrainment devices. Torpor Vigil Industries is an umbrella name for Venright's work in various media, with a focus on audio recording. Torpor Vigil Records is a Canadian avant garde/experimental music label owned by Venright, which has issued five CDs to date. Its feature artists are composer/performer Samuel Andreyev, and Dion McGregor, a deceased American lyricist renowned for his outlandish somniloquies recorded to tape in the 1960s by Michael Barr.