Anne Marriott shared the distinction with Emily Carr of being one of the first two B.C. writers to receive Governor-General's Awards (in 1942) for Calling Adventures. Of her books of poetry she was most widely known for her first collection, The Wind Our Enemy (1939), which recounts the living conditions of Saskatchewan farmers in the Depression. Marriott was born in Victoria on November 5, 1913 and educated in the Populars and Norfolk House Schools for Girls. She was co-founder of the poetry magazine Contemporary Verse with Dorothy Livesay, Floris McLaren, Doreis Ferne and Alan Crawley. She worked for the CBC (1945-1949) and the National Film Board (1945-1949) in Ottawa as a writer, married Gerald McLellan on December 16, 1947 and raised three adopted children. She worked as women's editor for the Prince George Citizen (1952-1953) and as a part-time custodian of the Prince George Library (1953-1954). Her husband died in 1974. Her poetry collection The Circular Coast: Poems New and Selected was nominated for the Governor General's Award in 1981. In 1984 she published her first fiction collection, A Long Way To Oregon, which was followed by Aqua. She lived primarily in North Vancouver during the 1980s and 1990s. At age 83 she died of a stroke on October 10th, 1997. In one of her final poems she wrote, 'For myself? / All that I ask / is that when I have to leave / there'll be a survivor / with a space for me / talking and scribbling in his brain / insisting he recall / my life's essential act: / I wrote poems / as / did all of / us.

BOOKS:

The Wind Our Enemy (Ryerson 1939)
Calling Adventurers (Ryerson 1941)
Salt Marsh (Ryerson 1942)
Sandstone and Other Poems (Ryerson 1945)
Countries (Fiddlehead 1971)
A Swarming in my Mind (Vancouver: Curriculum Services 1977) with Joyce Moller
The Circular Coast: Poems New and Selected (Mosaic 1981)
A Long Way to Oregon (Mosaic 1984)
Letters From Some Islands (Mosaic 1985)
Aqua (Wolsak and Wynn 1992)

[BCBW 1992] "Poetry" "Classic"