Person

McCaffrey, Steve, 1947-

1947-

He was born on January 24, 1947, in Sheffield, England.

He is a Canadian critic, poet, and educator. He attended the University of Hull, Yorkshire, England (B.A.), York University, Toronto (M.A.) and The State University of New York, Buffalo (Ph.D. in poetics, English, and comparative literature). He moved to Toronto in 1968 and became part of the Canadian avant-garde poetry scene in the 1970s. He collaborated with fellow poets Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and bpNichol, forming the sound-poetry group, The Four Horsemen. He has created three-dimensional structures of words and has released several sound and video works, often in collaboration with other poets. His visual poetry is in permanent collections at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Paul Getty Research Institute in Malibu, the International Concrete Poetry Archive in Oxford, England, and the New York Public Library in New York City. McCaffery’s poetry publications include many chapbooks and full-length collections, e.g., “Modern Reading: Poems 1969–1990” (1991), “Seven Pages Missing: Selected Texts Volume One and Volume Two” (2001, 2002), and “Verse and Worse: Selected and New Poems of Steve McCaffery 1989–2009” (2010). He has twice received the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative North American Poetry. His published scholarly works include “Imagining Language with Jed Rasula” (1998), “North of Intention: Critical Writings 1973–1986” (1986), and “Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics” (2001). He also taught at York University and currently holds the David Gray Chair at the SUNY, Buffalo.