Bert Almon

cSS undefined

Bert L. Almon (b.1943) is a Canadian poet originally from the United States. He is a two-time winner of the Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Poetry, and has also won the City of Edmonton Book Award.

Life
Almon was born in Port Arthur, Texas, "during a hurricane."

He received a B.A. in 1965 from the University of Texas at El Paso, and an M.A. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1971 from the University of New Mexico. His Ph.D. dissertation was the first ever on Beat poet Gary Snyder.

Almon began writing poetry in 1967. In 1968 he came to Canada, and began teaching creative writing and modern literature at the University of Alberta. More than 30 of his creative writing students have since gone on to publish books of poetry.

He has written a critical biography of William Humphrey. He has also published essays on Humphrey, Richard Bausch, Mary Karr, Pat Mora, Li-Young Lee, C. D. Wright, Frank Conroy, Eva Hoffman, and Naomi Shihab Nye for the Scribner's American Writers Series.

Almon has been both a Hawthornden Fellow in Poetry, and a finalist in the Blackwell's/Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition. He won the Writers' Guild of Alberta Award for poetry in 1998 for Earth Prime. His poetry has appeared in such journals as The Fiddlehead, Malahat Review, Grain, Prairie Fire, Descant, Prism international, and Queen's Quarterly. His newest collection, 2007's A Ghost in Waterloo Station, won the City of Edmonton Book Award, and the 2008 Writers Guild of Alberta Award for poetry.

Almon has become a Canadian citizen. He is married to the poet Olga Costopoulos; they have four children.

Poetry

 * The Return and Other Poems. Los Cerrillos, NM: San Marcos Press, 1968. 51 pp.
 * Taking Possession. San Luis Obispo, CA: Solo Press, 1976. 17 pp.
 * Poems for the Nuclear Family. Los Cerrillos, NM: San Marcos Press, 1979. 31 pp.
 * Blue Sunrise. Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 1980. 57 pp.
 * Deep North. Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 1984. 80 pp.
 * Calling Texas. Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 1990. 79 pp.
 * Earth Prime. London, Ont.: Brick Books, 1994. 96 pp.
 * Mind the Gap. Victoria, B. C.: Ekstasis Editions, 1996. 94 pp.
 * A Ghost in Waterloo Station. Victoria, B.C.: Brindle and Glass, 2007. 117 pp.

Prose

 * Gary Snyder. Boise, ID: Western Writers Series, 1980. 47 pp.
 * William Humphrey: Destroyer of Myths. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998. 462 pp.
 * This Stubborn Self: Texas Autobiographies. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2002.
 * "Family Memoirs and the Mexican Diaspora" In Kathleen Boardman, Dana Gioia (eds.), Western Subjects. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2004. 277-301 pages. ISBN 0-87480-815-4
 * A Ghost in Waterloo Station. Edmonton: Brindle and Glass, 2007. 118 pages. ISBN 1-897142-28-5

''Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the University of Toronto.