McGill Libraries
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Webb, Phyllis, 1927-2021
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1927-2021
History
Phyllis Webb was born on April 8, 1927, in Victoria, British Columbia.
She was a Canadian poet and broadcaster. She attended the University of British Columbia (B.A., 1949) and McGill University. In 1957, she won a grant that allowed her to study theatre in France. Webb's poetry had diverse influences, ranging from neo-Confucianism to the field theory of composition developed by the Black Mountain poets. Critics have described her collections "Naked Poems" (1965) and “Wilson's Bowl” (1980) as important works in contemporary Canadian literature. "Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems of Phyllis Webb" (2014) was her final collection of poetry. As a broadcaster at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the 1960s, she created the programs Ideas and Extension, a television program about Canadian poetry. She left the CBC in 1967 to return to British Columbia, where she remained for much of her life. Webb won the 1982 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry for "The Vision Tree" and Canada Council awards in 1981 and 1987. She became an officer of the Order of Canada in 1992. In 1999, she received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia.
She died on November 11, 2021, in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.