Phil Hall is well known as a writer and supporter of "work poetry." He stands in solidarity with workers, with the little guy, the often faceless many. His poetry can be fierce in their service, but it is sponsored by humane inquiry, not dogma. Amanuensis takes its title from a poem about ghostwriting, and the image plays teasingly over the whole volume. The language of this poetry, often spare and yet astonishingly sensuous, springs from mysterious though not supernatural sources in commonplace experience approached with reverence. Followers of Phil Hall's work will welcome the appearance in Amanuensis of a selection of his terrific workplace drawings.

Phil Hall’s first small book, Eighteen Poems, was published by Cyanamid, the Canadian mining company, in Mexico City, in 1973. Among his many titles are: Old Enemy Juice (1988), The Unsaid (1992), and Hearthedral – A Folk-Hermetic (1996). In the early 80s, Phil was a member of the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union, & also a member of the Vancouver Men Against Rape Collective. He has taught writing at York University, Ryerson University, Seneca College, George Brown College, and is currently the Writer in Residence at Queen's University. He has been poet-in-residence at Sage Hill Writing Experience (Sask.), The Pierre Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon), & elsewhere. In 2007, BookThug published Phil’s long poem, White Porcupine. Also in 2007. he and his wife, Ann, walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and lives near Perth, Ontario. Recent books include An Oak Hunch and The Little Seamstress. In 2011, he won Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Poetry for his most recent collection, Killdeer, a work the jury called “a masterly modulation of the elegiac through poetic time.” Killdeer was also nominated for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize, and won the 2012 Trillium Book Prize.

Phil Hall's profile page