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Patrick Lane, considered by most writers and critics to be one of Canada's finest poets, was born in 1939 in Nelson, BC. He grew up in the Kootenay and Okanagan regions of the BC Interior, primarily in Vernon. He came to Vancouver and co-founded a small press, Very Stone House, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne. He then drifted extensively throughout North and South America. He worked at a variety of jobs, from labourer to industrial accountant, but much of his life was spent as a poet. He was also the father of five children and grandfather of nine. He won nearly every literary prize in Canada, from the Governor General's Literary Award to the Canadian Authors Association Award to the Dorothy Livesay Prize. In 2014, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada, an honour that recognizes a lifetime of achievement and merit of a high degree. His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and translated into many languages. His more recent books include Witness: Selected Poems 1962-2010 (Harbour Publishing, 2010), The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane (Harbour Publishing, 2011), Washita (Harbour Publishing, 2014; shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award), Deep River Night (McClelland & Stewart, 2018) and a posthumous collection, The Quiet in Me (Harbour Publishing, 2022). Lane spent the later part of his life in Victoria, BC, with his wife, the poet Lorna Crozier. He died in 2019. Lorna Crozier has received numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Award, for her fifteen books of poetry, which include The Blue Hour of the Day, What the Living Won’t Let Go, Everything Arrives at the Light, and Inventing the Hawk. She is also the author of the memoir Small Beneath the Sky and the editor of several anthologies. She lives in Saanich, British Columbia.
""Lyric art of the highest order. The voice, relieved of everything nonessential, speaks with effortless assurance of last, and first, things.""–Jan Zwicky ""Lane is a poet more of the individual, hard-hitting poem; like physical blows, he wields his pieces like small threats of intense beauty.""–Globe and Mail ""...likely to be remembered as a man who fashioned some of the most gorgeously beautiful poems ever written in this country.""–Guy Vanderhaeghe, author of The Last Crossing and The Englishman's Boy
