About Parliamentary Poet Laureate John Steffler

John Steffler served as the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada from 2006 to 2008. Though he was born and educated in Ontario, Steffler spent many years in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, as a professor of English at Wilfred Grenfell College.

John Steffler’s books of poems include That Night We Were Ravenous (McClelland and Stewart 1998), The Wreckage of Play (McClelland and Stewart, 1988), and The Grey Islands (McClelland and Stewart, 1985), among others. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright was shortlisted for the 1992 Governor General’s Award for fiction and won the Smithbooks/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.

These excerpts were drawn from Waterfront Views, Contemporary Writing of Atlantic Canada (http://waterfrontviews,acadiau.ca/flash/steffler/steffler_bio.htm) and from the University of Toronto Libraries, Canadian Poetry Online (https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/steffler/index.htm) For additional information, see also the Atlantic Canadian Poets’ Archive (stu-acpa.com/john-steffler.html). For a more complete list of his poetry books, see Penny’s Poetry Pages Wiki (https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/John_Steffler).