Photo: Julia Ashberry

Alfred Wellington ‘Al’ Purdy was born 30 December 1918 in Wooler, Ontario and grew up in Trenton. During World War II, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and then worked as a labourer until he was able to support himself as a writer. In addition to poetry, Purdy wrote travel articles, book reviews, plays for the CBC, and also edited poetry anthologies. He died on 21 April 2000 of lung cancer in Sidney, British Columbia. On 23 September 2001, the public library in Ameliasburgh, Ontario was renamed the Al Purdy Library to honour the hamlet's famous resident.

Books by Al Purdy

	1944 The Enchanted Echo	Biblio.com
	1955 Pressed on Sand	Biblio.com
	1956 Emu, Remember!	Biblio.com
	1959 The Crafte So Long to Lerne	Biblio.com
	1962 The Blur in Between: Poems 1960-61	Biblio.com
	1962 Poems for All the Annettes	Biblio.com
	1965 The Cariboo Houses	Biblio.com
	1967 North of Summer: Poems from Baffin Island	Biblio.com
	1968 Wild Grape Wine	Biblio.com
	1970 Love in a Burning Building	Biblio.com
	1971 The Quest for Ouzo	Biblio.com
	1972 Hiroshima Poems	Biblio.com
	1972 Selected Poems	Biblio.com
	1973 On the Bearpaw Sea	Biblio.com
	1973 Sex and Death	Biblio.com
	1974 In Search of Owen Roblin	Biblio.com
	1976 The Poems of Al Purdy: A New Canadian Library Selection	Biblio.com
	1976 Sundance at Dusk	Biblio.com
	1977 A Handful of Earth	Biblio.com
	1977 At Marsport Drugstore	Biblio.com
	1977 Moths in the Iron Curtain	Biblio.com
	1977 No Other Country	Biblio.com
	1977 No Second Spring	Biblio.com
	1978 Being Alive: Poems 1958-1978	Biblio.com
	1981 The Stone Bird	Biblio.com
	1982 Birdwatching at the Equator: The Galapagos Islands	Biblio.com
	1982 Bursting in Song: An Al Purdy Omnibus	Biblio.com
	1983 Morning and It's Summer: A Memoir	Biblio.com
	1983 The Bukowski/Purdy Letters 1964-1974: A Decade of Dialogue (edited by Seamus Cooney)	Biblio.com
	1984 Piling Blood	Biblio.com
	1986 The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, 1956-1986	Biblio.com
	1987 The George Woodcock/Al Purdy Letters (edited by George Galt)	Biblio.com
	1990 A Splinter in the Heart	Amazon.ca Amazon.com Biblio.com
	1990 The Woman on the Shore	Biblio.com
	1992 Cougar Hunter: A Memoir of Roderick Haig-Brown	Biblio.com
	1993 Reaching for the Beaufort Sea: An Autobiography	Amazon.ca Amazon.com Biblio.com
	1993 Margaret Laurence - Al Purdy: A Friendship in Letters (edited by John Lennox)	Biblio.com
	1994 Naked With Summer in Your Mouth	Biblio.com
	1995 Starting from Ameliasburgh: The Collected Prose of Al Purdy	Amazon.ca Amazon.com Biblio.com
	1996 Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets, Selected Poems, 1962-1996	Amazon.ca Amazon.com Biblio.com
	1996 In Mexico	Biblio.com
	1997 To Paris Never Again	Amazon.ca Amazon.com Biblio.com
	2000 Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy	Amazon.ca Amazon.com Biblio.com
	2004 Yours, Al: The Collected Letters of Al Purdy (edited by Sam Solecki)	Amazon.ca Amazon.com Biblio.com
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Poems online

• At Evergreen Cemetery
• Dead Poet, The
• Her Gates Both East and West
• Last Picture in the World, The
• Listening to Myself
• Lu Yu (AD 1125-1209)
• Married Man's Song

Awards

• Canada Reads
  • 2006 – Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems, 1962-1996 – Shortlisted

• Governor General's Literary Award: Poetry (English)
  • 1965 – The Cariboo Horses – Winner
  • 1986 – The Collected Poems of Al Purdy – Winner

• Order of Canada
  • 1982 – Officer

Articles & Tributes

‘Al Purdy's Contemporary Pastoral.’ D.G. Jones, Canadian Poetry Studies / Documents / Reviews, 1982.

A study of Purdy's poetry.

Added 11 February 2006.
Updated 30 January 2010.