John Barton
Contributor Banff Centre Press
John Barton was born in Edmonton in 1957 and raised in Calgary. He has lived and studied in New York, London, Ontario, Ottawa, and Victoria, BC. He has published eight books of poetry and five chapter books, including A Poor Photographer (Sono Nis, 1981), West of Darkness: Emily Carr, a self-portrait (Penumbra, 1987; Beach Holme, 1999), Great Men (Quarry, 1990), Designs from the Interior (Anansi, 1994), Sweet Ellipsis (ECW, 1998), Hypothesis (Anansis, 2001) Runoff (Viola Leaflets, 2003), and Asymetries (Frog Hollow, 2004). He is the winner of the 1986 Patricia Hackett Prize (University of Western Australia), a three-time winner of the Archibald Lampman Award, and in 2003 placed second in the poetry category of the CBC Literary Awards. Co-editor of Arc: Canada’s National Poetry Magazine in Ottawa from 1990 to 2003, he is now the editor of The Malahat review at the University of Victoria. He is also co-editor with Billeh Nickerson of Seminal: The Anthology of Canadian Gay-Male Poetry, which is forthcoming from Arsenal Pulp, and is at work on two new collections of poetry.