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HA&L Biographical Sketch
Judith Fitzgerald (1952-2015)
 Marshall McLuhan’s official biographer, Judith Fitzgerald, is the author of twenty-plus collections of poetry as well as three bestselling volumes of creative non-fiction, Marshall McLuhan: Wise Guy (Dundurn, 2001) and Sarah McLachlan: Building a Mystery (Quarry, 2000) among them. Rapturous Chronicles (Mercury, 1991) was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry while her epyllion, River (ECW, 1995), was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. The Poetry Fellow of the Chalmers Art Foundation’s collection of ghazals and sonnets, Twenty-Six Ways Out of This World (Oberon Press, 1999), was named one of the six best poetry collections of the year published in English (The Globe and Mail’s Top 100); additionally, The Globe and Mail again designated her completed Quartet one of its 100 best 2007 English-poetry works. Given Names: New and Selected Poems (Black Moss Press, 1985) was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and earned a Writers’ Choice Award. A senior contributing literary reviewer for The Globe and Mail (where she earned the Fiona Mee Award for her “outstanding contribution to English-language literary journalism"), Fitzgerald remarked, during a 2003 interview conducted by Jesse Kohl, “I do what I have to do in order to do what I want to do. Poetry is my vocation; journalism is my avocation. I create the latter to make a living, the former to make a life."
In October 2015 Ms. Fitzgerald launched her last book, Impeccable Regret (Talonbooks) at BookFest Windsor in conversation with Tom Dilworth. HA&L is proud to honour her memory by republishing this selection of poems that Judith gave us for issue 8.1. Judith died on November 30, 2015.
More on Judith in the next issue, Spring 2016.
Now enjoy
POEMS: a selection from Impeccable Regret
by Judith Fitzgerald >>>
[This HA&L biographical sketch and introduction © 2015 JF.]
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