In Vancouver the avenues are numbered and the streets named. That's a feature of Vancouver. Vancouver's Poet Laureate, George McWhirter, has taken on the task of creating an anthology on those features that give the face of Vancouver its identity. East Hastings could fill an anthology, but most of the city goes unversed. 'A Verse Map of Vancouver' fills the gap in Vancouver's verse geography by mapping the city, its neighbourhoods, its corners and intersections, its parks and landmarks. 'A Verse Map' is a word ordinance survey by poets of the locality, from those whose names have a legendary place (Pat Lowther, George Woodcock) through a roster of verse surveyors-too great a list to include them all here-who have established themselves over the last three to four decades (John Pass, Evelyn Lau, John Donlan, Daphne Marlatt, Roy Miki, George Stanley, Linda Rogers, Tom Wayman, Meredith Quartermain, Kate Braid, Brian Brett, Bud Osborn) on through to the current generation who are etching their marks on the city (Catherine Owen, Rita Wong, Chris Hutchinson, Mark Cochrane, Russell Thornton, Kuldip Gill, Fiona Lam). Upwards of 100 poets have been gathered here accompanied by the rich city photography of Vancouver artist and designer Derek von Essen.

"McWhirter's goal in 'Verse Map' is to bring poetry into "the everyday consciousness" of Vancouverites; for the rest of Canada, he provides a many-voiced, intimate and unpretentious portrait of the city." - The Globe & Mail

Born in 1939 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, George McWhirter grew up on the Shankill Road. He attended Queen’s University in Belfast, where his classmates included Seamus Heaney, and later completed a Masters degree at the University of British Columbia. McWhirter lived in Spain from 1965 to 1966, when he moved to Canada where he taught high school in Port Alberni, making an abrupt transition from Barcelona to living in a log cabin by Sproat Lake. He is the author of twenty books, many of which have won major awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the MacMillan Prize for Poetry, the Canadian Chapbook Poetry Competition Winner, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the FR Scott Prize for Translation. In 2005, George McWhirter retired as a professor in the Creative Writing Department at UBC. In 2007 he was inaugurated as the first Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver.

George McWhirter's profile page

P&gtGeorge McWhirter is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of over a dozen books of poetry and fiction. His translation of selected poems by Jose Emilio Pacheco won him the F.R. Scott Prize for translation. Mr. McWhirter's collection, I&gtCatalan Poems/I&gt, shared the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and his novel, I&gtCage/I&gt, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 1987./P&gt

Derek von Essen's profile page