Including 60 textbooks and teacher’s guides (over 1 million sold as of 2005), several chapbooks, over 100 magazine publications (U.S. and Canadian), many contest winners, several contest judgings, blog entries (2 blogs, 15 yrs. total), hundreds of readings and in-services, plus the completed, but unpublished projects including Inside E-Media, Hamlet: The Magazine, an anthology of short stories (gr. 9), and an anthology of modern drama.
RD: “Looking back, I was very lucky and I knew it.”
‘Word’ and poetry moments:
(definitely an influence)
(back of one of my chapbooks)
(starting up with Spiritus, performance poetry trio)
(first memorable publication: of an article on Canadian literature)
(the textbook career: 1980-2007, began with this title for general/non-academic courses; books were illustrated by Alligator Pie‘s Frank Newfeld and edited by Toronto friend Anthony Luengo who later also edited the Nelson Canadian Writer’s Handbook)
(even did writer’s handbooks beginning with this one)
(poetry readings continue to today; here at CBC Edmonton, Edmonton Centre)
(you have to read to write; lately, Virginia Woolf has been an influence)
(Cohen, Dylan , and The Beats were other influences)
(teaching sr. high English for 30 years inspired poems)
(the late Brian Kells, gr. 11 teacher, introduced me to Robert Frost’s poems; he also read the 1st poems I wrote in university)
(in an Edmonton cafe)
(poet at large, Victoria)
(wild reading with Spiritus around 1990 at ye olde Woodward’s Books, Southgate, Edmonton)
(wrote my 1st humorous pieces in gr. 9 (above, yearbook staff); later wrote for sr. high newspaper, The Huskian; but long before that, my bio story broke up my gr. 2 class at Bannatyne school, 1958 A.D.–made me more audience-conscious)
(with close writing partner Glen Kirkland in the early ’80s; my 1st books were with him and he showed me how to write good free-verse poetry; after 2000, I worked with the equally-talented, friend Jerry Wowk)
(my last chapbook, 2021)
Recent publications: a poem in the 2023 Stroll of Poets Anthology and poems for Prairie Journal magazine. And I still continue to publish creative works (poetry and prose) and non-fictional prose online on this blog.