Name Chris Faiers | Role Poet | |
Books Eel Pie Dharma : a Novella | ||
Chris Faiers (born 1948) is a librarian, poet and publisher of Unfinished Monument Press.
Contents
Biography
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, his family emigrated to the southern United States when he was six. Although a Canadian citizen by birth, he was eligible for the draft for the Vietnam War as a resident alien. Faiers became an anti-war activist in Miami, Florida, attending demonstrations, organizing a campus group and publishing an underground newsletter. Around 1968 Faiers began writing haiku poetry under the tutelage of Eric Amann, the publisher of Haiku magazine. He left the U.S. forever in June 1969.
Faiers lived for two years in the largest commune in the United Kingdom, the derelict Eel Pie Island Hotel in Twickenham. Eel Pie Dharma: a memoir/haibun tells the story of his explorations and adventures in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He returned to Canada in 1972 and joined the anti-imperialist Canadian Liberation Movement. In the CLM he met poets Milton Acorn and James Deahl and resumed writing poetry.
Literary activities
In addition to writing haiku, lyrical and political poetry, Faiers founded Unfinished Monument Press in 1978. He hosted a poetry reading series at the Main Street Library in Toronto, Ontario, and has been a proponent of Canadian haiku. Faiers was also a founding member of the Canadian Poetry Association, with James Deahl, Shaunt Basmajian and Wayne Ray and a founding member of Haiku Canada, with Eric Amann, George Swede, Margaret Saunders and others. In 1987 Faiers was the first recipient of the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award for his book Foot Through the Ceiling (1986). He moved to the Kawartha Lakes area of Ontario in 1989. He worked at the library in Stirling, Ontario for 10 years.