Alfred Wellington Purdy, O.C. (December 30, 1918 – April 21, 2000) is one of the most popular and important Canadian poets of the 20th century.

Born in Wooler, Ontario Purdy went to Albert College in Belleville, Ontario, and Trenton Collegiate Institute in Trenton, Ontario. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II.

Honours and awards Purdy has received include the Order of Canada (O.C.) in 1982, the Order of Ontario in 1987, and the Governor General's Award in 1965 for his collection The Cariboo Horses and in 1986 for his Collected Poems. He wrote the introduction to the last book of poetry by his friend Milton Acorn, The Whiskey Jack, published by HMS Press.

Purdy's collection of poems, Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems, 1962–1996, was chosen for inclusion in Canada Reads 2006, where it was championed by poet Susan Musgrave.

Purdy was also a long-time friend of American author Charles Bukowski. Bukowski stated once "I don't know of any good living poets. But there's this tough son of a bitch up in Canada that works the line."

Bibliography

• The Enchanted Echo — 1944
• Pressed in Sand — 1955
• Emu, Remember! — 1956
• The Craft So Long to Learn — 1959
• The Blur in Between — 1962
• Poems for All the Annettes — 1962
• The Caribou Horses — 1965
• North of Summer — 1967
• The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S. — 1968 (editor)
• Wild Grape Wine — 1968
• Fifteen Winds: A Selection of Mordern Canadian Poems — 1969 (editor)
• Love in a Burning Building — 1970
• Storm Warning: The New Canadian Poets — 1971 (editor)
• The Quest of Ouzo — 1971
• Hiroshima Poems — 1972
• Selected Poems — 1972
• On the Bearpaw Sea — 1973
• Sex & Death — 1973
• In Search of Owen Roblin — 1974
• Storm Warning 2: The New Canadian Poets — 1976 (editor)
• The Poems of Al Purdy — 1976
• Sundance at Dusk — 1976
• A Handful of Earth — 1977
• At Marsport Drugstore — 1977
• No Other Country — 1977
• Moths in the Iron Curtain — 1978
• No Second Spring — 1978
• Being Alive: Poems 1958–78 — 1978
• The Stone Bird — 1981
• Bursting Into Song: An Al Purdy Omnibus — 1982
• Birdwatching at the Equator — 1983
• Morning and It's Summer — 1984
• The Bukowski/Purdy Letters 1964–1974 — 1984
• Piling Blood — 1984
• The Collected Poems of Al Purdy — 1986
• The Woodcock/Purdy Letters 1964–1974 — 1988
• The Woman on the Shore — 1990
• A Splinter in the Heart — 1990
• Reaching for the Beaufort Sea: An Autobiography — 1993
• Margaret Laurence — Al Purdy: A Friendship in Letters — 1993
• Cougar Hunter — 1993
• Naked with Summer in Your Mouth — 1994
• Starting from Ameliasburgh: The Collected Prose of Al Purdy — 1995
• Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems — 1996
• To Paris Never Again — 1997
• No One Else is Lawrence! — 1998 (with Doug Beardsley)
• The Man Who Outlived Himself — 1999 (with Doug Beardsley)
• Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy — 2000
• Yours, Al: The Collected Letters of Al Purdy — 1998

External links

• CBC Digital Archives — Al Purdy, An Uncommon Poet