Fred Wah

1939

Canada as a Cultural River, Breathing his name with a sigh’

Fred Wah is a Canadian poet, born in 1939 in Swift Current, Saskatchewan to parents of Swedish and Chinese origin. He began
publishing poetry in the 1960’s as part of an international avant-garde movement based in Vancouver, often influenced by jazz.

He grew up in the West Kootenays in rural B.C. and worked at his father’s Chinese-Canadian cafés, which he wrote about in his biofiction, Diamond Grill (1996). With his collection of critical essays, Faking it: Poetics and Hybridity, Wah emerged as an important writer in literature, identifying himself as part of a group of “Asian-Canadian writers…[who] seek to redress and rewrite the colonizing racism of western transnational ideologies.”

He taught English at University of Calgary until his retirement in 2003. He was Poetry Editor for The Literary Review of Canada (2003-2005). and president of the Writers Union of Canada (2001–2002). In 2011, Wah was appointed as Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate.

[Canada is a] very fluid cultural river that we find ourselves in from time to time.