Christopher Dewdney was born in London, Ontario, Canada, in 1951. His father is the late Selwyn Dewdney, the renowned archaeologist, author and historian.

"Because of my father's concerns, I grew up with a prodigious amount of national history, natural history, and there was as much art around the house as there was science."

That Dewdney's poems reflect both an interest in art and science is borne out by the fact that his poetry can be found in either the poetry or natural history sections of book stores and libraries.

"My poetry," he says, "is warped out of science. I think I'm a frustrated scientist in poetry and a frustrated poet in science. A lot of poets have an anti-science bias, a vision of themselves as romantics in a tower, but I don't. I'm a naturalist, I believe that science and nature are one, that science is a perceptual tool which allows us to define nature more specifically. Science has to incorporate and mythologize as it happens. All poetry deals with information, finally."

Christopher Dewdney is one of Canada's most celebrated and respected writers. He has published 10 books of poetry, including Predators of the Adoration and Radiant Inventory, both of which were nominated for Governor General's Awards. A first-prize winner of the CBC Literary Competition, Christopher Dewdney has also received a third Governor General's Award nomination for The Immaculate Perception, a non-fiction book of popular essays about consciousness, language and dreams.

In May, 1994 McClelland and Stewart published Demon Pond. Quill and Quire wrote that in Demon Pond "Dewdney has undergone a transformation; his poetry has taken on greater humanity and been touched by love, while still in touch with the gods."

In 1984 (together with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Ondaatje and Tom Waits) he was featured in the internationally acclaimed documentary Poetry in Motion. He is an active figure in the North American literary scene, and he has been published in Germany, England, China, Spain, India as well as in the U.S. Recently he has appeared on TVO's Imprint, CBC's Newsworld and CITY TV as well as CBC Radio's Morningside and The Arts Tonight.

Well known for his brilliance, wit and irreverence, Christopher Dewdney is a sought-after speaker and reader in both Canada and the United States.

— Written by McClelland and Stewart.

See also:

• Dragland, Stan. "Christopher Dewdney." Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 60. Ed. W. H. New. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1987. 42-46.
• Canadian Who's Who. Vols. 23 - . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988 - .

Christopher Dewdney's works copyright © to the author.