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Dorothy Livesay
(1909-1996)

Active: 1928-1996 in Canada, North America

(Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay)

By Peggy Kelly (University of Ottawa)

Indexing Data:

  • Active In: Canada, North America
  • Born In: Canada, North America
  • Activity: Poet

Life, Works and Times

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Dorothy Livesay (1909-1996) was a major figure in the rise of modernist poetry in Canada. She published twenty-one volumes of poetry during her lifetime, leaving behind hundreds of poems, many of which were published posthumously in Archive for Our Times (1998). She was also a dramatist, literary critic, short story writer, magazine editor, and journalist. Livesay’s work is politically oriented. From the radical politics of the Communist Party of Canada in the 1930s, she migrated to the socialist politics of the New Democratic Party of Canada after the Second World War, and she maintained a feminist perspective throughout her life. Livesay mentored generations of Canadian poets through teaching, editing two anthologies of Canadian

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First published 22 February 2004

Citation: Kelly, Peggy. "Dorothy Livesay". The Literary Encyclopedia. 22 February 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2759, accessed 9 February 2010.]