Patricia Kathleen Irwin

married name; also known as P.K. Page (the writer); In Memoriam P.K.Page (Patricia Kathleen Irwin) 1916-1010- was a poet, painter, and writer of prose. After growing up as a British immigrant on the prairie, she led a bohemian life in Montreal during the Second World War, writing short stories, working on a literary magazine with poet and constitutional lawyer Frank Scott, and honing her modernist voice. In 1950 she married magazine and newspaper publisher Arthur Irwin-her "rock" - and embarked on a completely different kind of life as a diplomat's wife in Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Guatemala. In the decades when cultural nationalism was gestating in Canada, she was out of the loop living mainly abroad in exotic postings, but on her return, she settled in Victoria, once thought of as an outpost of Empire, and, after an awkward transition, foud a secure and significant place in Canadian letters. A sharp-eyed observer of the world and of her own species, she wrote more than 35 books, including two as recently as last November - a long poem called 'Cullen' and a trilogy of fables for children called 'The Sky Tree'. She won the Governor-General's Award for "The Metal and the Flower", back in 1954 and was short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2003 for 'Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New". The title poem had been selected two years previously to mark the United Nations International Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations and had been read aloud simultaneously in New York, the Antarctic and the South Pacific. Under her married name, P.K.Irwin, she created a large oeuvre of paintings, from whimsical to metaphysical, minimalist to lush, which are now held by the National Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontarion, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and private collectors across the country. Excerpts from : Sandra Martin's Lives Lived Column "Literary icon's poems were 'daring in scope, meticulous...and boldly moral' - Governor-General's Award winner was a prolific writer who also won accolades as a visual artist" Globe and Mail, Saturday 16, 2010.