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Fred Wah

Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Fred Wah was raised in the interior of British Columbia and received his BA in English from UBC. He was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter Tish, the editor of Sum magazine (1963-65), and later co-editor with Frank Davey of SwiftCurrent (1984-1990). Wah is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Pictograms from the Interior of B.C. (1975), Loki is Buried at Smoky Creek: Selected Poems (1980), Music at the Heart of Thinking (1987), and Diamond Grill (1996). In 2018, he and poet-activist Rita Wong co-authored beholden: a poem as long as a river. Wah’s critical work includes the award-winning Faking it: Poetics & Hybridity (2000).

| Recordings

  • Fred Wah Reads from “Mountain”

    Fred Wah reads from one of his earliest collections of poems.

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  • Fred Wah at Malaspina College (1972)

    This recording consists of a feature-length reading by Fred Wah, hosted by Morris Donaldson, at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo, B.C., 3 Feburary 1972. See the exhibit “World word alive”: Fred Wah at Malaspina” for further context.

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    Hearing the Interior (2025)

    The opening of “Hearing the Interior with Fred Wah and Pauline Butling” exhibition featured readings by Daphne Marlatt, Sharon Thesen, Erin Scott, Deanna Fong, and Klara du Plessis.

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| Remediations

  • ,

    “World word alive”: Fred Wah at Malaspina 

    By Klara du Plessis  On 3 February 1972 at 8pm, Fred Wah was recorded on ¼ inch magnetic tape reading at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo, B.C. The event was sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts and formed part of a two-month series that included other poets such as Stan Persky and Robert Kroetsch. The reel-to-reel is part of the Fred Wah fonds in the SoundBox Collection at the University…

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| Bibliography

Fred Wah Digital Archive: A Collection of Works Involving Canadian Poet Fred Wah. Ed. Deanna Fong. Available Online: https://fredwah.ca/

Wah, Fred. Scree: The Collected Earlier Works (1962-1991). Ed. Jeff Derksen. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2016.

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