Wayne Clifford
Event: 52
Poet Wayne Clifford moved to the island of Grand Manan, New Brunswick, in 2007. He and his wife, M.J. Edwards, live in a tall house with two black cats and a griffon dog, where she practices as an artist and he writes full time.
Wayne met M.J. in Kingston, where he lived for 35 years, teaching writing and fine arts at St. Lawrence College. The author of more than a dozen poetry books and chapbooks, his ground-breaking sonnet sequence The Exile’s Papers is currently three volumes. He is also an amateur musician, artist, and award-winning designer.
Wayne holds an MA and MFA from the prestigious international Writers’ Workshop at The University of Iowa, and a BA from University of Toronto. While still an undergraduate in 1967, he won numerous prizes for his poetry, including the E. J. Pratt Award that he shared with Michael Ondaatje.
Back then, at the fledgling Coach House Press, he worked as a printer’s devil–an apprentice – and as poetry acquisitions editor.
Theseus, Wayne’s new book, is a collaboration he began in 1966 with the late poet bpNichol, and is based upon the Greek myth of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur. ForeWord Reviews writes: “Outrageous wordplay, variable rhyme and stanza patterns, and wild tonal shifts act out a continual metamorphosis.”
Photo Credit: Mary Joan Edwards
