Patrick Friesen

Patrick Frank Friesen (born 5 July 1946) is a Canadian author born in Steinbach, Manitoba, primarily known for his poetry and stage plays beginning in the 1970s.

Life and career

Friesen was born into a Mennonite family in Steinbach, Manitoba in 1946. As a child growing up in Steinbach, he was friends with Shingoose, who later became a well-known musician, and Wayne Tefs, future author and co-founder of Turnstone Press. After graduating high school at the Steinbach Collegiate Institute, he studied at the University of Manitoba and lived in Winnipeg for thirty years.

In addition to poetry, Friesen has also written songs and collaborated with dancers, choreographers, composers and musicians. His Mennonite upbringing still influences his writing in work such as The Shunning, which is about the persecution of a Mennonite farmer questioning his religion.

Friesen lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is a teacher of creative writing at the University of Victoria. He is married to poet Eve Joseph.

Awards and recognition Friesen won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award at the Manitoba Book Awards for his work on "Blasphemer's Wheel," and was runner up in Milton Acorn's People's Poetry Awards. In 1997, his work, "A Broken Bowl", was short listed for the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry.

Friesen collaborated with Per Brask on the translation from Danish of Ulrikka S. Gernes' Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize.