Pat Lowther

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Patricia Louise Lowther (née Tinmuth) (July 29, 1935 - September 24?, 1975) was a Canadian poet. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, she grew up in the neighboring city of North Vancouver. When she was ten years old, her first published poem appeared in The Vancouver Sun.

It wasn't until 1968 that she published her first collection, This Difficult Flowring, with Very Stone House, a small Canadian poetry press. In 1972, "The Age of the Bird", a long poem inspired by revolutionary politics in South America, was published as a broadside by Blackfish Press. Its companion poem, "Regard to Naruda", was written for Pablo Neruda, one of Lowther's political and literary inspirations.

Milk Stone, published in 1974 by Borealis Press, became Lowther's breakthrough into Canadian mainstream literature. A Stone Diary was submitted to Oxford University Press in 1975. In late September of that year, Lowther disappeared. Three weeks later, her body was found in a creek near Squamish, British Columbia. Her second husband Roy Lowther, whom she had married in 1963, was convicted of the murder in June 1977. He died in prison in 1985.

Two years after the poet's murder, Oxford published A Stone Diary. In 1980, a collection of Lowther's early and unpublished poems, Final Instructions, was also published. Also that year, the League of Canadian Poets established the Pat Lowther Award, a prize awarded annually to a book of poetry by a Canadian woman.

Lowther's life and death have served to inspire a number of works, including her daughter Christine Lowther’s first poetry collection, New Power (1999), and the novels Swann: A Mystery (1987) by Carol Shields and Furry Creek by Keith Henderson (1999). The title of her A Stone Diary may also have inspired the title of Shields' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Stone Diaries (1993).

To date, two studies of her work have been published: Pat Lowther's Continent: Her Life and Work by Toby Brooks (2000) and The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther by Christine Wiesenthal (2005).

[edit] Bibliography

  • This Difficult Flowring - 1968
  • The Age of the Bird - 1972
  • Milk Stone - 1974
  • A Stone Diary - 1977
  • Final Instructions - 1980
  • Time Capsule - 1997

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