Mark Abley
Mark Abley has written three books of poetry: Blue Sand, Blue Moon (Cormorant, 1988), Glasburyon (Quarry, 1994) and The Silver Palace Restaurant (McGill-Queen’s, 2005). “Glasburyon,” a poetic elegy for dying languages, has been translated into Esperanto and Jèrriais. At the moment he is preparing a volume of new and selected poems.
He has also written two children’s books and five books of non-fiction. The most recent, Conversations With a Dead Man: The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott, was submitted on deadline to Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. in October 2012, the same week that the publisher entered bankruptcy protection. Such episodes of bad luck, even though they hurt, don’t begin to match all the good luck he received in winning a Rhodes Scholarship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, marrying an amazing woman and fathering two tremendous daughters.