Coles, Don

Donald Langdon Coles (1927-2017), poet, author and educator, was born in Woodstock, Ontario in 1928 and received a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1949 and 1953. He received an M.A. from Cambridge University in 1955, following which he lived for ten years in continental Europe. From 1965 to 1996, Coles was a professor of humanities and creative writing at York University in Toronto, Canada. He was the Poetry Editor of "The May Studio" for the Banff Centre for the Fine Arts from 1984 to 1993 and is the author of over eight books of poetry of his own. His collection "Forests of the medieval world" (1993) was awarded the Governor-General's Award for Poetry. He received the Trillium Book Award for his collection "Kurgan". His poem "Driving in the car with her" was included in the Arvon International Poetry Competition Anthology. He is also the author of the novel "Doctor Bloom's story." "How we all swiftly," an anthology of his first six books of poetry, was published in 2006; an autobiographical work entitled "A dropped glove in Regent Street" appeared in 2007 and a collection of poetry, "Where we might have been," was published in 2010. Don Coles died on 29 November 2017.