The Essential Elizabeth Brewster

Elizabeth Brewster (1922-2012) was part of a second wave of modernist poets who helped influence the national conversation about Canadian poetry. Born in Chipman, New Brunswick, Brewster was the frail fifth child in a family unsettled by poverty. While her early school attendance was irregular, nothing stopped her from reading, writing, and later, seeking higher education, first at the University of New Brunswick, where she helped to establish the vaunted literary journal The Fiddlehead, and then at a number of institutions including Harvard's Radcliffe College; King's College, London; and Indiana University. She settled in Saskatoon, and taught literature and creative writing at the University of Saskatchewan from 1972 until she retired in 1990. Brewster died in December of 2012 in Saskatoon, at the age of 90. (Image courtesy of University of Saskatchewan, University Archives and Special Collections, Photograph Collection, A-11138.)

Ingrid Ruthig is the author of This Being (Fitzhenry & Whiteside), which won the League of Canadian Poets’ 2017 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and of Slipstream (ARKITEXWERKS, 2011), as well as the editor of The Essential Anne Wilkinson (Porcupine’s Quill, 2014) and Richard Outram: Essays on His Works (Guernica Editions, 2011). Her work has also appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and CNQ, among others. A 2018 Hawthornden Fellow, she lives near Toronto. Visit ingridruthig.com for more.