Personne

Suknaski, Andrew

• Suknaski, Andy

1942 -2012

Poet and visual artist, Andrew Suknaski, was born on a homestead near Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan on July 30, 1942, to parents Julia (Karasinski) and Andrew Suknaski, Sr. To develop his interest in visual arts, Suknaski studied at the Kootenay School of Art in Nelson, British Columbia, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' School of Art and Design, receiving a diploma of Fine Arts from the Kootenay School in 1967. He also attended the University of Victoria, Notre Dame University in Nelson, B.C., the University of British Columbia, and Simon Fraser University.

For a time, he worked as a seasonal worker across Canada, including being a farmhand and a night watchman. He wrote during his travels. He was editor for Anak Press and Deodar Shadow Press, among others. In 1969, he founded the underground magazine Elfin Plot in Vancouver and created concrete poems, exhibiting at the Expo in Buenos Aires in 1971. From 1977 to 1978, Suknaski was writer-in-residence at St. John’s College, University of Manitoba. Among his early works published in chapbooks, pamphlets and Al Purdy’s anthology, Storm Warning (1971), was the notable On First Looking Down From Lions Gate Bridge (1976). Suknaski’s first collection was Wood Mountain Poems (1976), edited by Al Purdy, followed by The Ghosts Call You Poor (1978) and In The Name of Narid (1981). Ghosts won Suknaski the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award in 1979. Octomi (1976) and East of Myloona (1979) were published as small chapbooks. Montage for an Interstellar Cry (1982) and Silk Trail (1985) were the first and third parts respectively of a larger work that was to be called Celestial Mechanics. Suknaski’s poems have appeared in such anthologies as Number One Northern (1977) and Studio One: Stories Made for Radio (1990).

Sukanski also worked as a researcher for the National Film Board, contributing to such films as Grain Elevator (1981) by Charles Konowal and The Distinherited (1985) by Harvey Spak. Spak made a documentary of Suknaski in 1978 entitled Wood Mountain Poems, considered by Steven Scobie in The Land They Gave Away to be “the best critical statement we have on the poet’s life and work.” Suknaski’s Polish and Ukrainian heritage, his concern for First Nations, and the people and place of Wood Mountain feature strongly in his realist poetry.

Suknaski passed away in Moose Jaw on May 3, 2012.

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Created by Andrea Martin (August 2014). Revised by N. Courrier (October 2019).

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