Al Purdy
- In full:
- Alfred Wellington Purdy
- Born:
- Dec. 30, 1918, Wooler, Ont., Can.
- Died:
- April 21, 2000, Sidney, Vancouver Island, B.C. (aged 81)
- Also Known As:
- Alfred Wellington Purdy
- Notable Works:
- “Being Alive”
- “Piling Blood”
- “To Paris Never Again”
Al Purdy (born Dec. 30, 1918, Wooler, Ont., Can.—died April 21, 2000, Sidney, Vancouver Island, B.C.) was one of the leading Canadian poets of the 20th century. His erudite, colloquial verse often deals with the transitory nature of human life.
Purdy attended Albert College in Belleville and Trenton Collegiate Institute (both in Ontario) and served with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. His early poetry, collected in The Enchanted Echo (1944), Pressed on Sand (1955), and Emu, Remember! (1956), is conventional and sentimental, but his maturation as a poet is evident in The Crafte So Longe to Lerne (1959), Poems for All the Annettes (1962), The Blur in Between (1962), and The Cariboo Horses (1965), a collection of allusive and energetic verse.
The influence of Purdy’s extensive travels is reflected in many of the poems in the collections North of Summer (1967), Wild Grape Wine (1968), Sex and Death (1973), and Birdwatching at the Equator (1982). Poems about his native Ontario are featured in the collections In Search of Owen Roblin (1974), Being Alive (1978), and Morning and It’s Summer (1983). His other books of poetry include Hiroshima Poems (1972), Piling Blood (1984), and The Woman on the Shore (1990). In 1990 Purdy published his first novel, A Splinter in the Heart, and his autobiography, Reaching for the Beaufort Sea, appeared in 1993. A collection of reviews, essays, travel pieces, and anecdotes, Starting from Ameliasburgh: The Collected Prose of Al Purdy, was published in 1995; most of the pieces are about Canada and Canadian authors. His introspective and melancholic work To Paris Never Again (1997) contains poems about death and lost friends, as well as a short memoir recounting his development and experiences as a poet. Purdy was a two-time recipient (1965 and 1986) of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the highest poetry prize in Canada.
