Robert Paul Kroetsch (June 26, 1927 – June 21, 2011)"Robert Kroetsch, acclaimed Canadian author, dies in Alberta crash". The Globe and Mail, June 22, 2011. was a Canadian novelist, poet and nonfiction writer. In his fiction and critical essays, as well as in the journal he co-founded, boundary 2, he was an influential figure in Canada in introducing ideas about postmodernism.Robert Kroetsch's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia.
He was born in Heisler, Alberta. He began his academic career at Binghamton University (State University of New York); after returning to Canada in the mid-1970s he taught at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Kroetsch is well known for his influential 1977 long poem Seed Catalogue, published by Turnstone Press, "which is to Albertans what Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is to Americans." Kroetsch's 1969 novel The Studhorse Man won the 1969 Governor General's Award for Fiction, while he was also nominated for the Governor General's Award for Poetry for his volume The Hornbooks of Rita K.
Kroetsch spent several years in Victoria, British Columbia, before returning to Winnipeg, then to retirement in Alberta, where he continued to write. In 2004 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Kroetsch died in an automobile accident returning home from a literary festival in 2011."Robert Kroetsch, acclaimed Canadian author, dies in Alberta crash". The Globe and Mail, June 22, 2011.
Bibliography
Novels But We Are Exiles – 1965 The Words of My Roaring – 1966 The Studhorse Man – 1969 (winner of the 1969 Governor General's Award for Fiction) Gone Indian – 1973 Badlands – 1975 What the Crow Said – 1978 Alibi – 1983 The Puppeteer – 1992 The Man from the Creeks – 1998 (in German) transl. Martina Tichy: Klondike. Die Ballade von Lou und Dangerous Dan McGrew. Schneekluth, Munich 2005
Poetry The Stone Hammer Poems – 1975 The Ledger – 1975 Seed Catalogue – 1977 The Sad Phoenician – 1979 The Criminal Intensities of Love as Paradise – 1981 Field Notes: Collected Poems – 1981 Advice to My Friends – 1985 Excerpts from the Real Worlds: A Prose Poem in Ten Parts – 1986 Completed Field Notes: The Long Poems of Robert Kroetsch – 1989 The Hornbooks of Rita K – 2001 (nominated for a Governor General's Award) The Snowbird Poems – 2004 Too Bad: Sketches Toward a Self-Portrait – 2010 I'm Getting Old Now- unknown
Other Alberta – 1968 The Crow Journals – 1980 Labyrinths of Voice: Conversations with Robert Kroetsch – 1982 Letter to Salonika – 1983 The Lovely Treachery of Words: Essays Selected and New – 1989 A Likely Story: The Writing Life – 1995 Abundance: The Mackie House Conversations about the Writing Life – 2007 (with John Lent)
See also
Canadian literature Canadian poetry List of Canadian poets
Further reading Simona Bertacco: Out of place. The writings of Robert Kroetsch. Peter Lang, Berne 2002 Francis Zichy: Disenchanted Modernity in Robert Kroetsch's "The Studhorse Man." Biology and Culture; Sex and Gender; Eugenics and Contraception; Writing and Reading. Peter Lang, New York 2011 Fiona McMahon: Robert Kroetsch and archival culture in the Canadian long poem, in Études canadiennes. Revue interdisciplinaire en France, 74, 2013, p. 73–85 en ligne
References
External links Robert Kroetsch Biography Robert Kroetsch fonds (papers) at Archives and Special Collections, University of Calgary Complete list of literature (primary, secondary), University of Manitoba, 1965–2004 Kroetsch's item at Athabasca University, further links, e.g. to an interview with him