Wayne Clifford

For the Australian former professional rugby league footballer, see Wayne Clifford (rugby league).

Wayne Clifford (born 1944) is a Canadian poet and academic.

Early life and education
Clifford was born in 1944 in Toronto, Ontario. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto in 1967, where he was the co-winner of the E. J. Pratt Prize, shared with Michael Ondaatje. He then earned a Master of Fine Arts from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1969.

Career
Clifford began writing poetry when he was fourteen. His first collection, Man in a Window (1965), was the first volume published by Canadian literary publisher, Coach House Press. At the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Clifford worked with Harry Duncan of Cummington Press, and founded Living Series, which published work by colleagues as broadsheets and chapbooks (Michael Lally and Ray DiPalma, among others). Although he was invited as a delegate to the founding conference of the League of Canadian Poets, and helped organize the Kingston's Writers' Association, the Kingston branch of Canadian Artists' Representation, and The Monday Night Boys, Clifford has never allied himself with a school, group or faction. His work demonstrates this independence, moving between elegant, dense and often highly musical freer compositions to an unfashionable but exquisitely made formalism. Clifford has published in a broad range of journals, from The Canadian Forum, Queen's Quarterly and ARC to avant-garde magazines like bill bisset's Blewointment, bpNichol's ganglia, and Sheila Watson's Pelican.

Personal life
In 2004, Clifford left teaching to write full-time. He presently lives on the island of Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy.