Person

Rosenblatt, Joe, 1933-2019

1933-2019

Joe Rosenblatt was born on December 26, 1933, in Toronto, Ontario.

He was a Canadian poet, writer, and visual artist. The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he grew up in Toronto in the Kensington Market area. He worked as a labourer for the Canadian Pacific Railway and political activist before he encountered the local poetry scene, which quickly drew him in. His first poems were published in the 1960s. He also worked as an editor of Jewish Dialog. He will likely go down in literary history for writing the second book ever published by Coach House Press, “The LSD Leacock,” in 1966. The same year he received a Canada Council grant that allowed him to quit his railway job and write full-time. In 1976, he won the Governor General's award for poetry for his volume of selected poems, “Top Soil.” In 1980, he moved to Vancouver Island and served as Writer-in-Residence and visiting lecturer at the University of Victoria. He travelled extensively for readings in Italy, and several of his books were translated into Italian. His vivid and unique imagination and love of nature inspired his prolific career as a visual artist. His 1986 book “Poetry Hotel” won the B.C. Book Prize for Poetry (now the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize). He also published "Winter of the Luna Moth" (1968), "Virgins & vampires" (1975), “Escape from the Glue Factory: a Memoir of a Paranormal Toronto Childhood in the Late Forties" (1985), and "The Bird in the Stillness: Forest Devotionals" (2016). Rosenblatt’s last book of poems and illustrations, "Bite Me: Musings on Monsters and Mayhem," was published just days before his death in 2019.

He was married to Faye Smith (1937-2017). He died on March 11, 2019, in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia.