Dewdney, Christopher

Christopher Dewdney, poet, writer, artist (b at London, Ont 9 May 1951). Christopher Dewdney once said that the basic themes of his decidedly avant-garde work were science, madness and elegance. Since his first collection, Golders Green (1971), Christopher Dewdney has published and garnered critical acclaim for both his poetry and non-fiction. Dewdney has taught in creative writing departments and served as writer-in-residence at many Canadian universities.

His poetry collections Predators of the Adoration (1983) and Radiant Inventory (1988) were nominated for GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARDS. Christopher Dewdney's poetry reveals a fascination with the natural world described through the vocabulary of palaeontology, biology and physics, occasionally illustrated with his own drawings. This specialized language makes his work sometimes difficult but Dewdney is at his most accessible in the postmodern love poetry of his collection Demon Pond (1994). The Natural History (2002) brings together and completes Dewdney's decades' long poetic meditation on his home ground, southwestern Ontario.

Christopher Dewdney is also an accomplished non-fiction writer. The Immaculate Perception (1986), a volume about consciousness, language and dreams, earned a Governor General's nomination and was a winner in the CBC Literary Competition. In his 1998 Last Flesh: Life in the Transhuman Era, Dewdney considers the repurcussions for humanism of contemporary technological advances. Dewdney's scientific curiosity and poetic sensibilities are both brought to bear on his subject in Acquainted with the Night: Excursions Through the World After Dark (2004), for which he received his fourth Governor General's nomination. He expands his focus from nighttime to time itself in his 2008 Soul of the World: Unlocking the Secrets of Time.

Author MARLENE ALT Revised: KAREN GRANDY