Born in the village of Plati in northern Greece, Ilya Tourtidis of Royston, British Columbia lived in Australia for ten years, from ages four to fifteen, prior to his arrival in British Columbia in 1965. He received an M.A. from University of Victoria and he was the co-recipient of the 1993 Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian for Mad Magellan's Tale (Sono Nis, 1992). Gerald Lampbert was an arts administrator who organized authors' tours and took a particular interest in new writers. An Associate Fellow of The Rational Emotive Therapy Institute of New York, Tourtidis has since published The Spell of Memory (Oolichan, 2004), an autobiographical exploration of the paradoxical nature of the witness, and his metaphysical collection Path of Descent and Devotion (Libros Libertad, 2009), described as "a meditative voyage into the secret pleats of human soul."

Bardo is the Tibetan word for 'intermediate state'. Tourtidis' collection of poetry Bright Bardo (Libros Libertad, 2011) examines a writer's in-between state - the 'bright void between words'.

BOOKS:

Bright Bardo (Libros Libertad, 2011) 9781926763118 $17.00

[BCBW 2011] "Poetry"