Brian Henderson

Brian Henderson (born 1948) is a Canadian writer, poet, and photographer, whose book of poetry Nerve Language was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 2007.

Biography Henderson, born in 1948 in Kitchener, Ontario, has a PhD in Canadian Literature from York University. Henderson has worked as a university instructor, a phone jack installer, a traffic counter, a shipper/receiver, and a rock drummer.

He is the author of thirteen collections of poetry including The Alphamiricon, a deck of visual poem-cards. His work has been published in many small magazines. In the 1970s Henderson was a founding editor of RUNE.

He was the director of Wilfrid Laurier University Press from 2005-2016.

Literary activities His poetry and literary criticism has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Antigonish Review, Canadian Forum, Canadian Literature, CVII, Descant, ECW, The Fiddlehead, Prism, Quarry, Rampike, RUNE (of which he was a founding editor for its decade of existence), Scrivener, Writ and many other literary journals since 1974.

Awards

Nominations

Governor General's Award for Poetry, 2007, finalist (for Nerve Language) Canadian Author’s Association Award for Poetry, 2012, finalist (for Sharawadji) Raymond Souster Award, 2020, longlisted

Published works Books: Unfinishing, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022 Unidentified Poetic Object, Brick Books, 2019 [OR], Talonbooks, 2014 Sharawadji, Brick Books, 2011 Nerve Language, Pedlar Press, 2007 Light in Dark Objects, Ekstasis Editions, 2000 Year Zero, Brick Books, 1995 Smoking Mirror, ECW Press, 1990 The Alphamiricon, Underwhich Editions, 1987; available on Ubu.com/visual poetry Migration of Light, General Publishing, 1983 The Veridical Book of the Silent Planet, Aya Press, 1978 Paracelsus, Porcupine's Quill, 1977 The Expanding Room, Black Moss Press, 1977

Anthologies: W.H. New, ed., Inside the Poem, Oxford University Press, 1992 Robert Allen, ed., The Lyric Paragraph, D.C. Books, 1987 Leslie Nutting, ed., The Toronto Collection, Manoeuvers Press, 1984 Ken Norris, Twenty Canadian Poets of the Eighties, Anansi, 1984