Poets

Laureate - 2016

Margaret Atwood

Canada

Biography

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa. She is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, novels, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction. While studying in Boston, she published her first collection of poetry, The Circle Game (1966), which was awarded the prestigious Governor General’s Award and she gained international reputation after publishing the poetry collection Double Persephone. Over the next few years, she continued to alternate between poetry and prose. In her poetry, the most common theme is the relation between civilization and wilderness and she considers these oppositions to be some of the defining principles of Canadian literature. She is the author of over fifteen books of poetry which have been translated in many languages and published in more than twenty five countries. Her poetry work includes: The Circle Game (1964); The Animals in That Country (1969); The Journals of Suzanna Moodie (1970); Procedures for Underground (1970); Power Politics (1971); You are Happy (1974); Selected poems (1976); Selected poems (1965-1975); Two-Headed Poems (1978); Interlunar (1984); Selected Poems (1966-1984); Margaret Atwood Poems (1976-1986); Morning in the Burned House (1995); Eating Fire: Selected Poetry (1965-1995); The Door (2007).