POET ACADEMIC CRITIC

Louis Dudek was born in Montreal and educated at the Montreal High School and McGill and Columbia Universities. Prominently involved in the literary avant-garde from its early days, he published his first collection of poetry, East of the City in 1946. Except for a stay in New York during the 1940's, Dudek spent his entire life in Montreal teaching in the English Department of McGill University from which he retired as Greenshields Professor, and engaging actively in promoting young writers most of whom came his way via his classroom. He became prominently involved in developing little magazines and small presses, the most distinguished being Contact Press which, in its day, published many of the important Canadian poets of the mid-twentieth century. A prolific writer, book reviewer, cultural columnist and influential teacher, he published more than thirty collections of poetry, criticism and reflections on contemporary culture. His In Defence of Art: Critical Essays and Reviews was published in 1988 and The Poetry of Louis Dudek: Definitive Edition appeared in 1998. Active as a publisher, he helped bring out through Contact Press, Delta magazine and Delta Canada some of the most important Canadian poets of the second half of the 20th century. In 1984 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.

"Beauty is ordered in nature as the wind and sea shape each other for pleasure; as the just know, who learn of happiness from the report of their own actions." (Europe 95 - 1954)