Daphne Marlatt won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2009 for The Given (M&S 2008), a poetic narrative about Vancouver that she originally submitted as a novel. In her acceptance speech she said, "A good book never comes out of the blue. It is a creation of all the voices, written or spoken, that its author has heard and internalized. The Given is full of such voices, including some of my favourite Modernist women writers like Ethel Wilson, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, and Marguerite Duras. In a sense, singling out one book as the most deserving of honour is a fiction. Each book is part of an extensive conversation through time with other writers' books."
Born as Daphne Buckle to parents who evacuated Pulau Pinang, Malaysia, prior to the Japanese occupation, Daphne Marlatt spent six years in Malaysia after World War II before she immigrated to Vancouver in 1951. Her family came to live in North Vancouver. Much of her postmodernist writing would be attuned to the adjustments, struggles and accomplishments of immigrants. Marlatt first attended UBC (1960-1964) and completed her Masters in comparative literature at the University of Indiana (1968). Her literary associations with the loosely-named TISH group encouraged her non-conformist approach to language and etymological explorations. She was the founding editor of two literary magazines: periodics, with Paul DeBarros (1977-81) and Tessera, with Gail Scott, Barbara Godard, and Kathy Mezei, later Susan Knutson and Louise Cotnoir (1983-91). She has also co-edited West Coast Review (1988-89), Island (1981-84), The Capilano Review (1973-76) and TISH, the 2nd series (1963-65).
Following her marriage to Alan Marlatt and her partnership with multi-media artist Roy Kiyooka, her associations within the lesbian and feminist writing communities have increasingly affected her career. Her short novel Zocalo (Coach House, 1977) is derived from a trip to Mexico with Kiyooka (b. 1926-d. 1994). Set against the twin backdrops of the Gulf War and World War II, her novel Taken (Anansi, 1996) details the estrangement of a lesbian couple. While one partner visits her mother in the American midwest, the narrator pieces together her parents' and grandparents' histories in colonial Malaya and WW II Australia. Her earlier and better known Ana Historic (Coach House, 1988) uncovers three female lives in British Columbia, from the 19th century to the late 20th century. A contemporary woman, Annie, becomes fascinated by imagining the story of a Mrs. Richards whose name appears in the 1873 archives of Vancouver.
Marlatt received an honorary doctorate degree from University of Western Ontario in 1996. In September of 2004 she was appointed as the first writer-in-residence at Simon Fraser University in three decades. The program was revived by the SFU English Department and professor Roy Miki with funding from the university and Canada Council. Marlatt was previously writer-in-residence at the University of Windsor (2001-2), University of Western Ontario (fall, 1993), University of Alberta (1985-6) and University of Manitoba (fall, 1982). She was on the faculty for Writing Studios at the Banff Centre for the Arts (spring 2001, fall-spring 2000-01, fall 1999; and on the faculty for Sage Hill Fall Poetry Colloquium (1998). Having lived for a time on Salt Spring Island, she now lives with her partner in Vancouver.
In early 2006, Daphne Marlatt was appointed to the Order of Canada.
[Photo by Robert Minden, circa 1976]
CITY/TOWN: Vancouver
DATE OF BIRTH: July 11,1942
PLACE OF BIRTH: Melbourne, Australia
ARRIVAL IN CANADA: 1951
ARRIVAL IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: 1951
ANCESTRAL BACKGROUND: "British, sort of"
EMPLOYMENT OTHER THAN WRITING: Teaching at university level and teaching writing workshops
AWARDS, ETC.
The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize 2009 for The Given
The International Uchimura Naoya Prize 2008 for Pangaea Art's 2006 production of The Gull
Mayor's Arts Award for Literary Arts, 2008
Biography: 2008 Distinguished Poet in the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Chair at Vancouver Island University
2008-10 leading the Poetry Colloquium at Sage Hill Writing Experience, Saskatchewan
fall 2007 was writer-in-residence in the Dept. of English & Cultural Studies, McMaster University
2007 Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Calgary
2006 Order of Canada
BOOKS:
(poetry, unless noted otherwise)
The Gull (Talonbooks, 2009) contemporary Canadian Noh play, with Japanese translation by Toyoshi Yoshihara
Between Brush Strokes (JackPine Press, 2008) chapbook with drawings & design by Frances Hunter
At the River's Mouth: Writing Migrations (ICR, 2009)
The Given (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008) a long poem
Seven Glass Bowls (Nomados, 2003)
This Tremor Love Is (Talonbooks, 2001)
Winter/Rice/Tea Strain ( (M)Other Tongue Press, 2001)
Readings from the Labyrinth, essays (NeWest Press, 1998)
Taken, a novel (House of Anansi, 1996)
Two Women in a Birth, with Betsy Warland (Guernica 1994)
Ghost Works (NeWest Press, 1993)
Salvage (Red Deer Press, 1991)
Double Negative, with Betsy Warland (Gynergy Books, 1988)
Ana Historic, a novel (3rd ed. House of Anansi, 1997; 2nd ed. U.K. Women's Press 1990; 1st ed. Coach House, 1988); translation: Ana historique (Les editions du remue-menage, 1992) by Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagne
character/jeu de lettres, with Nicole Brossard (Nouvelle barre du jour/Writing, 1986)
MAUVE, with Nicole Brossard (Nouvelle barre du jour/Writing, 1985)
Touch to my Tongue, with photographs by Cheryl Sourkes (Longspoon, 1984)
How Hug a Stone (Turnstone, 1983)
here & there (Island Press, 1981)
Net Work: Selected Writing, ed. by Fred Wah (Talonbooks, 1980)
What Matters: Writing 1968-70 (Coach House, 1980)
The Story, She said (B.C. Monthly Press, 1977)
Zocalo, a novel (Coach House, 1977). Collected in Ghost Works (NeWest, 1993)
Our Lives (2nd ed. Oolichan, 1980; 1st ed. U.S. Truck Press, 1975)
Steveston with photographs by Robert Minden (3rd ed. Ronsdale Press, 2001; 2nd ed. Longspoon, 1984; 1st ed. Talonbooks, 1974)
Vancouver Poems (Coach House, 1972)
Rings (Vancouver Community Press, 1971)
leaf leaf/s (Black Sparrow Press in U.S., 1969)
Frames of a Story (Ryerson Press, 1968)
ALSO:
Oral history Opening Doors: Vancouver's East End (Sound Heritage VIII, 1/2, from the Provincial Archives), ed. with Carole Itter, photos by Todd Greenaway
Oral history Steveston Recollected: A Japanese-Canadian History (Provincial Archives, 1975) ed. with Maya Koizumi, trans., photos by Robert Minden and Rex Weyler.
Lost Language: Selected Poems of Maxine Gadd (edited with Ingrid Klassen) (Coach House Press, 1982).
Feminist literature In the Feminine: Proceedings of the Women and Words/Les femmes et les mots Conference 1983, ed. with Ann Dybikowski, Victoria Freeman, Barbara Pulling and Betsy Warland (Longspoon Press, 1985).
Feminist literature Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures, ed. with Lee Maracle, Sky Lee and Betsy Warland (Press Gang, 1990)
Mothertalk: the Life-Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka by Roy Kiyooka (posthumously edited) (NeWest Press, 1997).
"Like Light Off Water" (Vancouver: Otter Bay Productions, 2008) a CD, a selection of Steveston poems with the original music of Robert Minden & Carla Hallett
Photo by Jocelyn Mandryk.
[Alan Twigg / BCBW 2010] "Women" "Poetry" "Fiction" "Mexico"
Taken (Anansi $17.95)
Info
The Gulf War becomes a touchstone for a woman's recreation of her mother's life in World War II Australia in Taken (Anansi $17.95) by Daphne Marlatt. The narrator's lover has left for the United States to care for her ageing mother. In her absence, the narrator thinks how her own mother, Esme, pregnant and stranded in Australia, must have felt the day her husband, Charles sailed back into the war “to do his duty” against the Japanese.
[BCBW 1997]
