W.W.E. Ross

William Wrighton Eustace Ross [often misspelt William Wrightson Eustace Ross] (June 14, 1894 – August 26, 1966) was a Canadian geophysicist and poet. He was the first published poet in Canada to write Imagist poetry, and later the first to write surrealist verse, both of which have led some to call him "the first modern Canadian poet."

Life

Ross was born on 14 June 1894 in Peterborough, Ontario, to Ralph and Ella Louise Ross (née Wrighton). He grew up in Pembroke, Ontario. He studied geophysics at the University of Toronto, supporting his studies with summer work on geological surveys in Northern Ontario. prior Ross served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I as a private in the signal corps. .Ross was to live in this house for the rest of his life.

One night in April 1928, after an evening's discussion of Canadian nationalism among friends, Ross wrote "practically all" of his most famous work, "North." "It never 'clicked' so well before or since as that night in 1928," he later wrote. "He objected to both difficult and ornate verse and found the conventional romanticism of Canada's Confederation poets particularly unappealing."

It has been said that the poems of "North" "present the northern Ontario landscape in the stark manner of the Group of Seven. His strongest work is undoubtedly this early imagist-oriented poetry, work that derives its strengths from his restrained, skeptical personality, from his scientist's preference for objective, factual material, and from his affection for the Canadian wilderness landscape." This is poetry which, as he wrote in 'On National Poetry' (Canadian Forum, 1944), is 'distinctly located' in a geographic 'locale.' Shapes & sounds: poems of W. W. E. Ross (with a portrait by Dennis Burton, a memoir by Barry Callaghan, and an editorial note by Raymond Souster and John Robert Colombo). (Toronto: Longman's 1968)

Anthologized poems "The Diver," "If Ice," "The Snake Trying," The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English. Ed. Margaret Atwood. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1983.