Eldon Grier (13 April 1917 – 28 July 2001) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

poet and artist. Grier is best known for his poems regarding travel and art. Grier's early poems were influenced by Louis Dudek and Ralph Gustafson. His later works have been compared to those of Al Purdy. Grier has written many poems to painters and sculptors. His poems focus heavily on visual imagery and colours. In 1997 Grier was made a life member of the League of Canadian Poets.

Biography

Grier was born in

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and raised in

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.Victoria Price, "Eldon Grier Guide to Literary Masters and their works", Great Neck Publishing, 2007 He died at the age of 84 in

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. His father was Charles Brockwill Grier and his mother was Kathleen Phyllis Black Grier. His father was captain in the Canadian army. Following his service in the army Charles became a stockbroker and proceeded to send his son to private school. Grier married his first wife lizabeth Temple Jamieson) in 1944 and his daughter (Sharon) was born in 1948. Elizabeth and Charles were divorced in 1952 and Grier married his second wife Sylvia Tait in 1954.Fraser Sutherland, "Collected and Selected: Five Gems", The Globe and Main, August 4, 2001 They had two children together, a daughter named Alexa and a son named Brock. Grier was diagnosed with tuberculosisR W Stedingh. (2003)." Aesthetic Distances" Canadian Literature,(176), 144-145,205. Retrieved November 4, 2010, from CBCA Complete in his mid-thirties and underwent treatment for two years before he recovered. Grier started his career as an artist. At age seventeen Grier failed to find financial stability through art. In 1945 he travelled to Mexico to study fresco painting from

Alfredo Zalce Alfredo Zalce Torres (12 January 1908 – 19 January 2003) was a Mexican artist and contemporary of Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and other better-known muralists. He worked principally as a painter, sculptor, and engraver, also taught, and ...

.Rosemary Sullivan, "The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature", Oxford University Press, 2005 He was apprenticed to Diego Rivera as a plasterer. He later became a professor at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under

Arthur Lismer Arthur Lismer, LL. D. (27 June 1885 – 23 March 1969) was an English-Canadian painter, member of the Group of Seven and educator. He is known primarily as a landscape painter and for his paintings of ships in dazzle camouflage. Early life ...

.Douglas Fetherling, "Obituary: Eldon Grier Shunned Bombast of his Peers", The Vancouver Sun, August 4, 2001 pg. E17 Eldon Grier travelled Europe from 1955 to 1965. Grier spent his winters in Mexico. He began writing poetry in Spain in 1955. Grier decided to become a poet because he felt that meaning was expressed more effectively though words. He was a modernist. His poems manipulate lines shifts, rhyme and contain complicated stanzaic shapes.

Works

Grier's best known works are:'' A morning from scraps'' (1955), ''The year of the sun:poems'' (1956), ''The ring of ice'' (1957), ''Mazanillo & other poems'' (1958), ''A friction of lights'' (1963), ''Pictures on the skin'' (1967), ''The women of Quebec'' (1969), ''Selected poems:1955-1970'' (1971), and ''The assassination of colour'' (1978).

References

External links

* Archives of Eldon Grie
(Eldon Grier fonds, LMS-0247)
are held at

Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is th ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grier, Eldon 1917 births 2001 deaths 20th-century Canadian poets Canadian male poets 20th-century Canadian male writers British emigrants to Canada