When Claire Harris published Translation into Fiction (Goose Lane, 1984), she was hailed by Martin Ware in The Atlantic Provinces Book Review as "a powerful new voice." In 1985, Claire Harris was selected as the Best First Time Published Poet for the Americas region in the British Airways Commonwealth Prize competition. Her poems are charged with imaginative excitement and amplitude: "I dream of a new naming / new words new lines / shaping a new world / I ride it / as at a durbar / barelegged through wide fields / of baobab soaring in the wash / of midnight" — drawing upon an exotic yet personal sense of history while discovering a truly contemporary idiom. Claire Harris can invoke the drama of ideas and the ironies of immediate events with both intellectual confidence and human compassion.

Claire Harris is a Canadian poet of Trinidadian background who has produced eight collections of poems since her first volume, Fables from the Women's Quarters (1984), which won the Commonwealth Award for Poetry for the Americas Region. First released in 1992, Drawing Down a Daughter was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. Her work has been included in more than 70 anthologies and has been translated into German and Hindi. Claire Harris was born in Trinidad, West Indies, studied at University College, Dublin, where She earned a B.A. Honours in English. She came to Canada in 1966 and settled in Calgary. In 1975, during a study leave in Nigeria, she first wrote for publication and was encouraged by Nigerian poet, J.P. Clark. She also earned a Diploma in Communications from the University of Lagos, Nigeria (1975). After returning to Canada, Harris became active in the literary community in Calgary working as poetry editor at Dandelion from 1981-1989 and helping to found the all-Alberta magazine, blue buffalo, in 1983. She taught Grade Nine English in Calgary's Separate School system for 28 years, influencing generations of young people. Claire Harris is now retired and lives in Winnipeg.

Claire Harris' profile page