Canadian poetry is poetry of or typical of Canada. The term encompasses poetry written in Canada or by Canadian people in the official languages of English and French, and an increasingly prominent body of work in both other European and Indigenous languages.
George Elliott Clarke is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015, and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known for its use of a wide range of literary and artistic traditions, as well as its physicality and political substance. Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia."
Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made him enemies. As T. Jacobs notes in his biography (2001), Layton fought Puritanism throughout his life:
Layton's work had provided the bolt of lightning that was needed to split open the thin skin of conservatism and complacency in the poetry scene of the preceding century, allowing modern poetry to expose previously unseen richness and depth.
Archibald Lampman was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in English."
Earle Alfred Birney was a Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honour, for his poetry.
Alfred Wellington Purdy was a 20th-century Canadian free verse poet. Purdy's writing career spanned fifty-six years. His works include thirty-nine books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence, in addition to his posthumous works. He has been called English Canada's "unofficial poet laureate" and "a national poet in a way that you only find occasionally in the life of a culture."
Dennis Beynon Lee is a Canadian poet, teacher, editor, and critic born in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a children's writer, well known for his book of children's rhymes, Alligator Pie.
Duncan Campbell Scott was a Canadian civil servant and poet and prose writer. With Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Archibald Lampman, he is classed as one of Canada's Confederation Poets.
Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a leading West Indian writer, whose career spans four decades. She is now Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, serving in the role until 2020.
Arthur Stanley Bourinot, SM was a Canadian lawyer, scholar, and poet. "His carefully researched historical and biographical books and articles on Canadian poets, such as Duncan Campbell Scott, Archibald Lampman, George Frederick Cameron, William E. Marshall and Charles Sangster, have made a valuable contribution to the field of literary criticism in Canada."
Isabel Ecclestone Mackay was a Canadian novelist and poet.
Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall was a Canadian writer who was born in England but lived in Canada from the time she was seven. She was once "thought to be the best Canadian poet of her generation."
Edward Killoran Brown, who wrote as E. K. Brown, was a Canadian professor and literary critic. He "influenced Canadian literature primarily through his award-winning book On Canadian Poetry (1943)," which "established the standards of excellence and many of the subsequent directions of Canadian criticism." Northrop Frye called him "the first critic to bring Canadian literature into its proper context".
Jean McKishnie Blewett was a Canadian journalist, author and poet.
Helena Coleman was a Canadian poet, music teacher, and writer.
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, critic, professor, poet and editor. Originally from St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, Canada.
Norah M. Holland was a Canadian poet, playwright, journalist, and editor. She was a contributor to the Canadian Courier, The Canadian Magazine, Toronto Daily News, and the The Globe. During Holland's travels in Ireland and England in 1904, she stayed with John Butler Yeats, and he drew a sketch of her. Holland died in 1925.
Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald was a Canadian writer of poetry, children's literature, essays, and short stories. She regularly contributed articles to a number of Canadian and U.S. dailies. MacDonald was also one of the leaders of women's suffrage in Canada. She died in 1922.
Beatrice Redpath was a Canadian poet and short story writer. As with Victoria Grace Blackburn, Louise Morey Bowman, and Wilson MacDonald, Redpath was considered a poet of Canada's "Restoration Period". She was also a recipient of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (I.O.D.E.) prize for short story. Redpath died in 1937.
Annie Charlotte Armitage Dalton MBE was an English-born Canadian poet, sometimes known as "the Poet Laureate of the Deaf."
