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Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, OC, OBC, M.Ed, D.Litt, FRSC (12 October 1909 - 29 December 1996) was a Canadian poet.

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the daughter of J.F.B. Livesay and Florence Randal Livesay, she moved to Toronto, Ontario with her family in 1920. Livesay received a BA in 1931 from Trinity College in the University of Toronto and received a diploma from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work in 1934. She also studied at the Sorbonne and University of British Columbia. Her first collection of poetry, Green Pitcher (1928), was published when she was only nineteen. She worked for UNESCO in Paris in 1959 and in Northern Rhodesia as a field worker from 1960 to 1963.

From 1951 until 1984, she was an instructor and a writer-in-residence many Canadian universities, including the University of British Columbia (1951-53 and 1966-68), University of New Brunswick (1966-1968), University of Alberta (1968-1971), University of Victoria (1972-1974), University of Manitoba (1974-76), Simon Fraser University (1980-82), and University of Toronto (1983-84).

In 1937 she married Duncan Macnair, they had two children Peter Macnair and Marcia.

In 1975 she founded the literary quarterly Contemporary Verse 2.

She died in Victoria, British Columbia in December 1996.

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"Livesay's search for the 'essence' has led her through a series of transformations, from her earliest imagist and symbolist lyrics about love and isolation; through her activist 'agit-prop' writings of the forties and fifties; and, finally, to her confessional and feminist writings of the sixties and seventies." p. 393

Honours

 * She won the Lorne Pierce Medal in 1947.
 * In 1947 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
 * In 1983 she was made a Doctor of Athabasca University.
 * In 1986 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
 * In 1992 she was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
 * The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize is a category of the BC Book Prizes that is awarded to authors of the best work of poetry in a given year, where those authors are British Columbia or Yukon residents, or have been for three of the last five years. Originally known as the B.C. Prize for Poetry, in 1989 it was named after Livesay.

Selected works

 * Green Pitcher (1928)
 * Signpost (1932)
 * Day and Night (1944), winner of the 1944 Governor General's Awards
 * Poems for People (1947), winner of the 1947 Governor General's Awards
 * Call My People Home (1950)
 * New Poems (1955)
 * Selected Poems of Dorothy Livesay (1957)
 * The Colour of God's Face (1964)
 * The Unquiet Bed (1967)
 * The Documentaries (1968)
 * Collected Poems: The Two Seasons (1968)
 * Plainsongs (1969)
 * A Winnipeg Childhood (1973)
 * Nine Poems of Farewell (1973)
 * Ice Age (1975)
 * The Woman I Am (1977)
 * Right Hand Left Hand (1977)
 * The Raw Edges: Voices from Our Time (1981)
 * The Phases of Love (1983)
 * Feeling the Worlds (1984)
 * Beyond War: The Poetry (1985)
 * The Self-Completing Tree: Selected Poems:  (1986)
 * Journey With My Selves: A Memoir, 1909-1963 (1991)
 * Archive for Our Times: Previously Uncollected and Unpublished Poems of Dorothy Livesay (1996)

Discography

 * Celebration: Famous Canadian Poets CD Canadian Poetry Association &mdash; 2001 ISBN 1-55253-031-0  (CD#2) (with Eli Mandel )

Honours
Order of Canada « New SearchDorothy Livesay, O.C., O.B.C., M.Ed., D.Litt. Full Name Honour Received Residence Dorothy Livesay, O.C., O.B.C., M.Ed., D.Litt. O.C. Victoria, British Columbia Honour Appointment Investiture Officer of the Order of Canada December 29, 1986 April 29, 1987 Founding member of the League of Canadian Poets, former Writer-In-Residence at a number of Universities and presently Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University, winner of the Governor General's Prize for Poetry in 1944 and 1947, she is widely-known as one of this country's consistently outstanding poets.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Review of book, collection of autobiographical short stories http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/cm/cmarchive/vol17no5/beginnings.html