A Handful Of Earth

Al Purdy was born December 30, 1918 ,in Wooler, ON, and died April 21, 2000,
in Sidney, BC. He is considered one of Canada’s greatest poets, and was
dubbed "The Voice of the Land." He has also been called the "most," the
"first" and the "last Canadian poet."

Raised in Trenton, ON, he dropped out of high school and rode the rails to
Vancouver, where he began the life of an itinerant labourer. During WWII he
served in the Canadian air force and lived in BC from 1942 to 1944; he also
published his first book of poems, The Enchanted Echo, which he later
pronounced "atrocious." He served a long apprenticeship as a poet, finally
breaking through with The Cariboo Horses (1965), which won the Governor
General's Literary Award. From that time forward he was able to support
himself full-time by writing. He and his wife Eurithe travelled widely
while alternating their permanent residence between BC and Ontario.

Purdy published 33 books of poetry, along with a novel, A Splinter in the
Heart (1990); an autobiography, Reaching for the Beaufort Sea (1993); and
nine collections of essays and correspondence. His Collected Poems (1986)
won a second Governor General’s Award. Other collections include Poems for
All the Annettes (1962), North of Summer: Poems from Baffin Island (1967),
Wild Grape Wine (1968), Sex & Death (1973), Sundance at Dusk (1976), The
Stone Bird (1981), Piling Blood (1984), The Woman on the Shore (1990),
Naked With Summer in Your Mouth (1994), Rooms for Rent in the Outer
Planets: Selected Poems (1996), To Paris Never Again (1997) and a second
book of collected poems, Beyond Remembering: Collected Poems of Al Purdy
(2000). He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1983 and the Order of
Ontario in 1987. A strong nationalist, he achieved greatness in a way
different - and perhaps more fittingly Canadian - than any other writer
before him. It came not from great learning or heightened sensitivity or
stylized rhetoric, but rather by giving voice to the vernacular idiom of
ordinary Canadians.

Although he cherished the idea of being a writer from age 13, Purdy had
little formal education and travelled from coast to coast working at odd
jobs until he was in his forties, which gave him a worm’s-eye view of
Canadian reality that he never lost. Not only did he write naturally and
unaffectedly in the language of the mattress-factory lunch room, he also
wrote about its subjects: hating the boss, savouring a game of hockey,
brewing homemade beer, parting with a beloved old car, rowing with a spouse.
This was a highly original choice in a profession where linguistic
artifice and intellectual refinement are the norm, but what makes Purdy's
best work great is that it shows the language of ordinary life to have
resources of humour, intellect and lyricism fully as rich as those of
more formal writing. This was an innovation not only of national but of
worldwide significance, and Purdy has been justly honoured for it.