January 19, 2010. Renowned Canadian poet P.K. Page passed away at her home in Victoria on January 14th. We offer condolences to her family and celebrate the body of work she has left behind as her legacy to us all.

From the Globe and Mail, by Sandra Martin on January 17th:

A sharp-eyed observer of the world and of her own species, she wrote more than 35 books, including two as recently as last November – a long poem called Cullen and a trilogy of fables for children called The Sky Tree . She won the Governor-General's Award for The Metal and the Flower , back in 1954 and was short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2003 for Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New .

“She's a very important touchstone for writers,” Michael Ondaatje said in 1991. “She's raucous and funny in person, but her head is another reality. She has a very odd-angled vision of the world, tragic and comic, the imagined world lying side by side with the real.”

The late literary critic Constance Rooke identified her, decades ago, as quite simply: “Canada's finest poet.” Ms. Page had a plainer estimation of her own talents. “I don't think I am after fame although I would love to write one poem that is really, really good, but I don't think I will,” she confided two years ago. Obviously not suffering from megalomania, or what she called “the Irving Layton syndrome,” she did allow that she had written “a couple of fairly good poems, but I would like to write a really good poem, but I can't force it.”

P.K. Page worked with two of the Literary Press Group's publishers, Brick Books and The Porcupine's Quill. Please refer to their websites for more information on published titles of P.K. Page.

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