George McWhirter, Date of Birth, Place of Birth

    

George McWhirter

Canadian poet

Date of Birth: 26-Sep-1939

Place of Birth: Belfast, Northern Ireland

Profession: writer, poet, translator, university teacher

Nationality: Canada

Zodiac Sign: Libra


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About George McWhirter

  • George McWhirter (born September 26, 1939 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a Northern Irish-Canadian writer, translator, editor, teacher and Vancouver's first Poet Laureate. The son of a shipyard worker, George McWhirter was raised in a large extended family on the Shankill Road in Belfast.
  • He and his extended family spent the war years and then weekends and the summers at their seaside bungalow in Carnalea, now a suburb of Bangor, County Down.
  • In 1957 he began a "combined scholarship" studying English and Spanish at Queen's University, Belfast, and education at Stranmillis College, Belfast.
  • His tutor at Queen's was the poet Laurence Lerner, and he was a classmate with the future literary critic Robert Dunbar and the poets Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane.
  • After graduating, McWhirter taught in Kilkeel and Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, and in Barcelona, Spain, before moving to Port Alberni, B.C.
  • Canada.
  • After receiving his M.A.
  • from the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he studied under Michael Bullock and J.
  • Michael Yates, he stayed on to become a Full Professor in 1982 and Head of the Creative Writing Department from 1983 to 1993.
  • He retired as a Professor Emeritus in 2005.
  • He was associated with PRISM international magazine from 1968 to 2005.
  • McWhirter is the author and editor of numerous books and the recipient of many awards.
  • His first book of poetry, Catalan Poems, was a joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize with Chinua Achebe's Beware, Soul Brother.
  • He was made a life member of the League of Canadian Poets in 2005 and is also a member of the Writers' Union of Canada and PEN International.
  • In March 2007, he was named Vancouver's inaugural Poet Laureate for a two-year term.
  • He currently writes full-time and lives in Vancouver with his wife.
  • They have two children and three grandchildren.

Read more at Wikipedia

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