Rick Sparkes

Rick Sparkes is an award-winning writer and musician from Prince Edward Island. Since 2017, Sparkes, along with his band The Enablers, has released one EP and two LPs (2018’s The Trouble with the Light and 2021’s Pleasure in the Pathless Woods), and he has received multiple Music PEI Award nominations, including the SOCAN Songwriter of the Year at the 2020 Music PEI Awards. In 2022, Sparkes received the Music PEI Award for Group Recording of the Year for Pleasure in the Pathless Woods, a City of Summerside Cultural Award for Pleasure in the Pathless Woods, and a nomination for Group Recording of the Year (also for Pleasure in the Pathless Woods) for the 2022 East Coast Music Awards. Also, in March 2022, Sparkes was commissioned by the City of Summerside to write and present an original poem to the Summerside City Council in April as part of National Poetry Month. Clearly, Sparkes’ renown not only as a poet, but as a songwriter in the Canadian arts scene is on the rise.