Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

About

Patrick Lane

Patrick Lane headshot

Patrick Lane, considered by most writers and critics to be one of Canada's finest poets, was born in 1939 in Nelson, BC. He grew up in the Kootenay and Okanagan regions of the BC Interior, primarily in Vernon. He came to Vancouver and co-founded a small press, Very Stone House, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne. He then drifted extensively throughout North and South America. He worked at a variety of jobs, from labourer to industrial accountant, but much of his life was spent as a poet. He was also the father of five children and grandfather of nine. He won nearly every literary prize in Canada, from the Governor General's Literary Award to the Canadian Authors Association Award to the Dorothy Livesay Prize. In 2014, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada, an honour that recognizes a lifetime of achievement and merit of a high degree. His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and translated into many languages. His more recent books include Witness: Selected Poems 1962-2010 (Harbour Publishing, 2010), The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane (Harbour Publishing, 2011), Washita (Harbour Publishing, 2014; shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award), Deep River Night (McClelland & Stewart, 2018) and a posthumous collection, The Quiet in Me (Harbour Publishing, 2022). Lane spent the later part of his life in Victoria, BC, with his wife, the poet Lorna Crozier. He died in 2019.

Books by Patrick Lane

The Quiet in Me

Poems

by (author) Patrick Lane
introduction by Lorna Crozier

Deep River Night

A Novel

by (author) Patrick Lane

The Heart Is Improvisational

An Anthology in Poetic Form

by (author) Lorna Crozier & Patrick Lane
edited by Carol Lipszyc

Washita

New Poems

by (author) Patrick Lane

The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane

by (author) Patrick Lane
edited by Russell Morton Brown & Donna Bennett
afterword by Nicholas Bradley

Witness

Selected Poems 1962-2010

by (author) Patrick Lane

Over Prairie Trails

by (author) Frederick Philip Grove
afterword by Patrick Lane

Red Dog, Red Dog

by (author) Patrick Lane

Last Water Song

by (author) Patrick Lane

Addicted

Notes from the Belly of the Beast

by (author) Lorna Crozier
edited by Patrick Lane

There Is A Season

A Memoir

by (author) Patrick Lane

Breathing Fire 2

Canada's New Poets

edited by Lorna Crozier & Patrick Lane

Go Leaving Strange

by (author) Patrick Lane

Mocambo Nights

edited by Patrick Lane

The Bare Plum of Winter Rain

by (author) Patrick Lane

Patrick Lane in Cab 43

by (author) Patrick Lane

Selected Poems: 1977–1997

by (author) Patrick Lane

Alden Nowlan Selected Poems

by (author) Alden Nowlan
volume editor Patrick Lane & Lorna Crozier

Breathing Fire

Canada's New Poets

edited by Patrick Lane & Lorna Crozier
foreword by Al Purdy

Too Spare, Too Fierce

by (author) Patrick Lane

Poems Selected and New

by (author) Patrick Lane

A Linen Crow, A Caftan Magpie

by (author) Patrick Lane

No Longer Two People

by (author) Patrick Lane & Uher Lorna