Ken Norris (poet)

Kenneth Wayne Norris (born April 3, 1951)[1] is a poet, editor and professor of Canadian literature, retired from the University of Maine.[2] He was born in New York City to Leroy and Theresa Norris,[1] attended Stony Brook University for his BA from 1968-1972, and then moved to Montreal to pursue his MA in English at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University).[3] He chose Montreal because “Montreal sound like a magical, mystical place” and because of Leonard Cohen. He “was tired of being an anti-American American in the Nixon era, and coming to Quebec (and Canada) gave [him] a positive agenda, gave [him] something positive to be.”[4] After his graduation in 1975, he spent two years in New York before returning to Montreal for his PhD in English at McGill University, supervised by Louis Dudek, who in 1992 described Norris as "the most important poet writing on the North American continent today".[5] He became particularly interested in Canadian modernist literature, with his thesis entitled “The Role of the Little Magazine in the Development of Modernist and Post-Modernism in Canadian Poetry”.[3]

Starting from 1975, he became involved with the Vehicule Art Gallery and Vehicule Press, reading at the gallery, and publishing with and editing at the press. He was a core member of the Vehicule Poets.[6] From 1975-1983 he ran a literary magazine, CrossCountry, and a small press, CrossCountry Press with his friend Jim Mele in New York.[7] After the dissolution of CrossCountry due to lack of funds, Norris become the McGill-Writer-In-Residence 1983-1984. In 1985, he became a Canadian citizen and in the same year, he left Montreal to teach at the University of Maine in Canadian literature. He has also taught at Concordia University, Dawson College in Montreal and University of Western Ontario.[3]