Longtime West Kootenay writer, Fred Wah, named Canada's Poet Laureate

By Nelson Daily Sports

Longtime West Kootenay author, editor and teacher Fred Wah has been named Canada's next poet laureate. 

House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer and Senate Speaker Noel Kinsella jointly made the announcement.

"Fred Wah's poetry is grounded in Canada's political and social landscapes," Scheer said in announcing the appointment.  "He has done much to encourage and promote the importance of literature, culture and language within Canadian society." 

Wah is the fifth Canadian writer to hold the position of national poet laureate.
Wah taught for more than 20 years for Selkirk College, both at the Castlegar campus and as the founder and director of the writing program at Nelson's David Thompson University Centre, which operated between 1979 and 1984. 

DTUC, the prototype for B.C.'s university colleges, was a joint initiative of Selkirk and the University of Victoria.  Wah, a former president of the Writers Union of Canada, subsequently taught at the University of Calgary.

Wah's many books of poetry, essays, and memoir include Diamond Grill, which describes his childhood growing up in Nelson in the 1950s as the son of the owner of a Baker St. Chinese restaurant. 

Wah received the 1986 Governor General's Literary Award for his book of poems, Waiting for Saskatchewan, which also chronicles family and personal history.  He was the editor of Canada's first electronic literary magazine, Swift Current, in the 1980s. 

His most recent collection of poems is Is a Door (2009).  Wah currently divides his time between his home at Riondel on the East Shore of Kootenay Lake, and a pied-à-terre in Vancouver.