Joe Rosenblatt
Joe Rosenblatt was born in Toronto in 1933. He dropped out of trade school as a young adult and worked at a series of low-paying jobs until he started working as a laborer for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1956. He became interested in writing through his association with the worker poet Milton Acorn in the early sixties and the metaphysical poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen. By 1966 he had his first book of poetry published and he also received a Canada Council grant which allowed him to leave his job as a freight handler of the old Canadian Pacific Railway and devote the next year to writing and traveling.
Over the years, Rosenblatt has written more than 20 books of poetry, several autobiographical works and his poems have appeared in over thirty anthologies of Canadian poetry over his forty year career as a poet. His poetry books have received major awards, such as the Governor General's award for poetry in 1976 and the BC Book Prize in 1986. He has traveled widely giving readings of his poems in Europe, Canada and the United States. Several bilingual volumes of his poetry have been published in Italian with translations by the late Prof. Alfredo Rizzardi of the University of Bologna, and Ada Donati of Rome. His poems have also been translated into French, Dutch, Swedish and Spanish. Dog, a collaborative book of sonnets between Rosenblatt and Edmonton poet Catherine Owen, was recently published by Toronto's Mansfield Press, utilizing the images of homeless dogs of inner Havana, taken by Vancouver photographer Karen Moe. Her canine photographs are featured prominently in this volume. His most recent book, published fall, 2011 is a collaborative work, a savagely satirical epistolary exchange with Vancouver poet Catherine Owen. Dark Fish & Other Demons, publisher, Black Moss Press, Windsor. For the past 33 years Rosenblatt has been living in a beach resort community of Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island with his wife Faye and their generational cats.