Sabrina Benaim

Sabrina Benaim is a spoken-word poet from Toronto, Canada, who rose to wide attention through slam poetry, particularly her viral piece «Explaining My Depression to My Mother», which brought discussion of mental illness to a mainstream online audience via performances on stages like Button Poetry. Before that breakthrough, she was already an active figure in Canada's competitive poetry-slam scene, representing Toronto at national and international events.

Her work centers on candid, emotionally direct explorations of mental health, particularly depression and anxiety, alongside themes of love, grief, and family relationships. Benaim's style favors plainspoken, conversational language delivered with the rhythmic intensity typical of slam performance, using repetition and metaphor to make abstract inner experience legible to listeners unfamiliar with it. Pieces such as «First Date» and «So, I'm talking to depression...» extend this approach into wry, sometimes darkly humorous territory.

In 2017, she published her debut poetry collection, «Depression & Other Magic Tricks», which compiled and expanded on the themes that made her spoken-word performances resonate online, cementing her place among a generation of poets whose work moved from stage and video platforms into print and helped popularize contemporary confessional slam poetry.