Poet P.K. Page, a stalwart of Malahat Review and other small magazines, dead at 93

Very sorry to learn that poet P.K. Page, a National Magazine Award winner and the grand dame of Canadian poetry, has died at the age of 93, in Victoria. As CBC News reports   said, Page was considered one of Canada's most esteemed writers and a champion of small-scale publishing.

 Page was born in England and moved to Red Deer, Alberta in 1919, moving frequently with her father, who was a soldier. She began publishing poetry in periodicals starting in the late1930s and was frequently published in the Montreal journal Preview. She later worked as a scriptwriter for the National Film Board, where she met and married Arthur Irwin, who was the editor of Maclean's before becoming commissioner of the NFB in 1950.

The couple settled in Victoria in the mid-60s after her husband's retirement and she began a long association with the Malahat Review, which is based at the University of Victoria. Her financial generosity allowed the magazine to create the P.K. Page Founders Award for Poetry which, every spring, awards a $1,000 prize to the author of the best poem published by the Malahat in the previous year.

Her most recent books of poetry included Hologram (1994), The Hidden Room: Collected Poems (1998), Hand Luggage (2006), The Filled Pen: Selected Non-fiction of P. K. Page (2006), and Up on the Roof (short fiction, 2007).

• A tally of many of her long list of works.
• A story from Maclean's in May 2009 about the Irwins and the dedication of the Page Irwin Colloquium Room at Trent University
• A profile of P.K. Page from Monday Magazine in 2008

[ photo: Hedgerow Press]