Writing the Terrain: Travelling Through Alberta with the Poets

George Bowering is Canada's first poet laureate and an officer of the Order of Canada. He is the author of more than eighty books, the most recent of which include The Hockey Scribbler, Writing the Okanagan, and 10 Women. A native of British Columbia, he lives in Vancouver.

Tim Bowling is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Selected Poems and Circa Nineteen Hundred and Grief. He has also published four novels and two works of nonfiction. His work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Award, two Writers’ Trust nominations, and five Alberta Book Awards. Originally from Ladner, British Columbia, he now resides in Edmonton, Alberta.

Gary Geddes has written and edited more than forty books of poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction and criticism and has received numerous literary awards, including the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence and Chile's Gabriela Mistral Prize. He is the author of two best-selling travel memoirs, The Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things and Sailing Home. He lives on Thetis Island, British Columbia.

Laurence Hutchman was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Toronto. He received his PhD from the Université de Montreal and has taught at a number of universities. For twenty-three years he was a professor of English literature at the Université de Moncton at the Edmundston Campus. Hutchman has published 13 books of poetry, including Foreign National, Beyond Borders, Reading the Water, Personal Encounters, Two Maps of Emery, The House of Shifting Time, Fire and Water (in collaboration with Eva Kolacz) and Swimming Toward Sun Collected Poems: 1968-2020. He has also co-edited the anthology Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada and edited In the Writers’ Words.

His poetry has received many grants and awards, including the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence and has been translated into numerous languages. In 2017 he was named poet laureate of Emery, north Toronto. He lives with his wife, the artist and poet, Eva Kolacz in Oakville, Ontario.

E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) was born on the Six Nations Reserve near Brandford, Ontario, the daughter of George Johnson, a Mohawk chief, and Emily Howells, an Englishwoman. Often billed as "the Mohawk Princess," she spent a number of years touring Canada, the United States and England, giving dramatic readings of her work. She retired to live in Vancouver in 1909 and published Legends of Vancouver a couple of years before her untimely death in 1913. Her ashes are buried in her beloved Stanley Park.

Pauline Johnson published numerous storeis and poems, as well as six books, two of them posthumously: The White Wampum (1895), Canadian Born (1903), Legends of Vancouver (1911). Flint and Feather (1912), The Moccasin Maker (1913) and The Shagganappi (1913).

KIM MALTMAN is a poet, theoretical particle physicist, and occasional translator who has published five books of solo poetry, over two hundred papers in the scientific literature, and three books of collaborative poetry, most recently Box Kite, published in 2016. In addition to recent solo work which has appeared under a variety of heteronyms, he is involved, in collaboration with Roo Borson, in ongoing translations of the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai and Song Dynasty poet Su Shi. Past honours include the CBC Literary Prize, and, with collaborators Roo Borson and Andy Patton, the Malahat Poetry Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, and two National Magazine Award finalist appearances. Perhaps his most unusual literary credit is having served as consulting dog poetry editor for André Alexis’s novel Fifteen Dogs. He lives in Toronto with poet and collaborator Roo Borson. Baziju are currently at work on a new manuscript project called Short Moral Tales.

Barry McKinnon was born in Calgary in 1944. He publishes, designs and edits chapbooks for Gorse Press.

Born in England, but raised in Red Deer, Alberta, P.K. Page was a Canadian poet and author of over 30 published books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays, children's books, and an autobiography. She was also a well-known visual artist, who exhibited her work as P.K. Irwin both in and outside of Canada. Her works are in permanent collections of National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario. P.K. Page spent the last years of her life in Victoria, British Columbia, where she died in January 2010.

Rajinderpal S. Pal was named "Best Local Author" by the readers of Calgary's Fast Forward magazine. He also won the Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book for his critically-acclaimed poetry collection pappaji wrote poetry in a language i cannot read, which spent six weeks on the Calgary Herald bestseller list. He also has won the Calgary semi-finals of the CBC Radio Poetry-Face Of. Pulse has been nominated for both the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (an Albert Book Award) and the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize from the City of Calgary. He lives in Vancouver.

The former president of Calgary's Sage Theatre and former managing editor of filling Station magazine, he is presently on the Board of Directors of the Calgary Folk Fest and the Arts and Culture Committee of Calgary Foundation. He has participated in international arts festivals such as ArtWallah. Rajinderpal has published in literary magazines throughout North America, and is in translation in Brazil and Portugal.

Karen Solie is the author of three collections of poems, including Pigeon, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Her poems have been published in North America, the U.K., and Europe. She lives in Toronto.

Tom Wayman's prolific writing career includes more than twenty poetry collections, three collections of critical and cultural essays, three books of short fiction, and a novel. He won the 2013 Acorn-Plantos Award for his book Dirty Snow and has been shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award. In 2015, Wayman was named a Vancouver Literary Landmark, with a plaque on the city's Commercial Drive commemorating his championing of people writing for themselves about their daily employment. Since 1989 he has been based in the Slocan Valley in southeastern BC, where he is active in a number of community literary ventures. His website is www.tomwayman.com.

The "Mama of Dada"
Poet, film-maker, educator, producer, and activist Sheri-D Wilson has 7 collections of poetry; her most recent, Autopsy of a Turvy World (2008, Frontenac House). Her last collection, Re:Zoom (2005, Frontenac House), won the 2006 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the CanLit award. She has 2 Spoken Word CDs (arranged by Russell Broom), and 4 award-winning VideoPoems: Airplane Paula (2001), Spinsters Hanging in Trees (2002), Surf Rave Girrly Girrl (2004), and The Panty Portal (2008), all produced for BravoFACT.

Awards Include: CBC Arts Top Ten Poets in Canada (2009), ffwd Readers' Choice - Best Poet ( 2008, 2007), Global TV's Woman of Vision Award (2006), SpoCan Award (2005), Bumbershoot Heavyweight Title for Poetry USA (2003), Gold Award at the Houston Film Festival (2003), Three ACE awards (2003), AMPIA (2003, for best short or vignette), CBC Face-off (2002)

Reading Highlights: Blue Met 2009 (Montreal), Voix d'Amériques 2008,'05 (Montreal), Bumbershoot 2003, '99, '92, '91, '89 (Seattle), Vancouver International Writers Festival 2002, '00, '95, '93, '90 (Vancouver), The World Poetry Bout 2002 (Taos, New Mexico), Poetry Africa 2001 (South Africa), WordFest 2008, 2000, '95 (Calgary, Banff), Harbourfront Reading Series 1993 (Toronto), Small Press Festival 1990 (NYC).

Other Highlights: Women and Words, 2003-2007 (instructor), First

Rita Wong is a writer, teacher, and waterkeeper. She is the author of three books of poetry and the co-author of several collaborative works, most recently, beholden: a poem as long as the river (2018), with the poet Fred Wah. With Dorothy Christian (Secwepemc and Syilx Nations), Wong edited downstream: reimagining water (WLU Press, 2017). She is an associate professor of Critical + Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she teaches classes in the humanities and creative writing.