Daphne Marlatt

Daphne Marlatt, born Buckle, CM (born July 11, 1942 in Melbourne, Australia), is a Canadian poet and novelist who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

At a young age, her family moved to Malaysia and at age nine, they moved to British Columbia, where she later attended the University of British Columbia.

There she developed her poetry style and her strong feminist views.

Daphne Marlatt was born to English parents, Arthur and Edrys Lupprian Buckle, in Melbourne, Australia on July 11, 1942.

At the age of three, Marlatt's family moved to Penang, Malaysia and then at the age of nine her family immigrated to Vancouver.

Marlatt received her B.A. from the University of British Columbia in 1964 and while there, in 1963, became an editor for TISH, a Canadian literary journal.

In 1968, she received an MA in comparative literature from Indiana University.

Her poetry, while considered extremely dense and difficult, is also much acclaimed.

After traveling around the continent with her husband, Gordon Alan Marlatt, a clinical psychologist, she then settled down for a while in Bloomington, Indiana where she received her M.A. from the Indiana University in Comparative literature in 1968.

It is here where she started to write Frames of a Story (1968).

Marlatt's, What Matters: Writing 1968-1970, includes some of her early writings, including "Rings" and "Vancouver Poems" and was published in 1980.

And according to www.athabascau.ca, Net Work: Selected Writing is "a selection of poetry spanning from Frames of a Story (1968) to What Matters (1980) is an excellent cross-section of her early poetry."

It is through these pieces and earlier pieces that Marlatt's feminist theory begins to emerge.

In 1969, Marlatt published leaf leaf/s, which is a collection of shorter poems.

Marlatt and her partner, the poet and artist Roy Kiyooka, separated in the late 1970s and it is around this time that she and her son moved back to Vancouver.

In 1971, Marlatt published Rings, a collection of poems about pregnancy, birth, and early parenting.

She started teaching writing and literature at Capilano College and also edited for The Capilano Review.

In 1972 she published Vancouver Poems.

Marlatt published a well known piece of hers, Steveston, in 1974.

This piece is about a small fishing village that Marlatt explains the relation to its history as a camp for Japanese Canadians during World War II.

In 1975, Marlatt published Our Lives, a poetry piece about "organic implosions of relationships", according to BookRags.

In 1977, The Story, She Said was published and so was her book, Zocalo.

Zocalo is a collection of long poems about the travels had through the Yucatán.

In 1977, Marlatt co-founded periodies: a magazine of prose (1977–81) and in 1981 published here & there.

It was around this time that Marlatt became more involved in feminist concerns, and attended and organized several feminist conferences.

Robert Lecker, in the 1978 article "Perceiving It as It Stands" from Canadian Literature, says "Marlatt has every right to join Kay and Gerda in flight, for their predicament, and the development of their story, serve as a metaphor for the problems of growth encountered by a poet struggling to break away from the frames imposed by established word patterns and the falsities implied by a world view which categorizes experience, storytelling it in standardized form, as if the motion of living was always the same, always sane."

Also, in 1980 she had, Net Work: Selected Writing, published, which contains new "confidence and authority", according to Fred Wah, a professor at the University of Calgary.

He goes on to say that "the flow of town and history, of the Japanese people and the cannery, especially of the river and language, are more securely rooted in place and concentrated in the writing consciousness than in any other of her books."

In 1983, Marlatt's How Hug a Stone was published, which follows that journey traveled by herself and her son, in 1981, to England.

In 1984, Touch to My Tongue was published.

Both pieces "express her intense apprehension of the continually changing world.", according to Douglas Barbour, an author of The Canadian Encyclopedia.

She also, in 1985, co-founded Tessera, which is a feminist journal.

Around this time, Marlatt is quoted to saying, "a time of transition for me as i tried to integrate my feminist reading with a largely male-mentored postmodernist poetic, at the same time coming out as a lesbian in my life as well as in my writing."

Marlatt created two books, Mauve, published in 1985 and character/jeu de letters, published in 1986, with Quebec feminist and writer Nicole Brossard.

Double negative, a piece that was put together between Marlatt and Betsy Warland, her significant other, was published in 1988.

In 1988, the introduction of one of Marlatt's most distinguished pieces, Ana Historic, was published.

This novel, according to www.athabascau.ca, " describes the experiences of women both historic and contemporary."

In 2006, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada.

Daphne Marlatt is an author, teacher, writer, editor, mother and feminist.

Her works include two novels, several poetry pieces, and many edited literary journals and magazines.