Dorothy Livesay

Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, (October 12, 1909 – December 29, 1996) was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General's Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.

Livesay was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Her mother, Florence Randal Livesay, was a poet and journalist; her father, J.F.B. Livesay was the General Manager of Canadian Press.

Livesay moved to Toronto, Ontario, with her family in 1920.

Livesay's first collection of poetry, Green Pitcher, was published in 1928, when she was only nineteen.

The Encyclopedia of Literature says, "these were well-crafted poems that not only showed skilled use of the imagist technique but prefigured Margaret Atwood's condemnations of exploitative and fearful attitudes to the Canadian landscape."

The book "later disappointed Livesay by its failure to deal openly with social issues.

She published her first short story, "Heat", in the Canadian Mercury at the same age (in January, 1929).

She graduated with a BA in 1931 from Trinity College in the University of Toronto and received a diploma from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Social Work in 1934.

She also studied at the University of British Columbia and the Sorbonne.

In 1931 in Paris, Livesay became a committed Communist.

Her second book of poems, Signpost (1932), "showed the increasing sophistication of her imagist skills, as in 'Green rain', and an original sense of feminine sexuality."

She joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1933, and was active in a number of its front organizations: the Canadian Labour Defence League, the Canadian League Against War and Fascism, Friends of the Soviet Union, and the Workers' Unity League.

Livesay moved to Vancouver in 1935, and married Duncan Macnair, a fellow socialist, in 1937.

They had two children, Peter and Marcia.

In the early 1940s Livesay suggested to Anne Marriott, Floris McLaren, and Doris Ferne that they start a poetry magazine which would serve as a vehicle for poets outside the somewhat closed Montreal circle.

Alan Crawley agreed to edit the magazine, and the first issue of Contemporary Verse appeared in September 1941, After Macnair died in 1959, Livesay worked for UNESCO in Paris, and then in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) as a field worker from 1960 to 1963.

Livesay won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top poetry honour, twice: in 1944 for Day and Night, and in 1947 for Poems for People.

The Royal Society of Canada elected her as a Fellow, and awarded her its Lorne Pierce Medal, in 1947.

Between 1951 and 1984, she was an instructor and a writer-in-residence at many Canadian universities, including the University of British Columbia (1951–53 and 1966–68), University of New Brunswick (1966–1968), University of Alberta (1968–1971), University of Victoria (1972–1974), University of Manitoba (1974–76), Simon Fraser University (1980–82), and University of Toronto (1983–84).

When her Selected Poems were published in 1956, Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye said of them:

In 1975 Livesay founded the journal Contemporary Verse 2 (CVII).

Livesay also won the Queen's Canada Medal in 1977, and the Persons Case Award for the Status of Women in 1984.

In 1983 she was made a Doctor of Athabasca University and in 1987 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Originally known as the B.C. Prize for Poetry, in 1989 it was named after Livesay.

Except where otherwise noted, bibliographic information courtesy Brock University.

Livesay was awarded the Order of British Columbia in 1992.

The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize is a category of the BC Book Prizes that is awarded to authors of the best work of poetry in a given year, where those authors are British Columbia or Yukon residents, or have been for three of the last five years.

She died in Victoria, British Columbia in 1996.