Edward A. Lacey

Edward A. Lacey (1938-1995)^[1] was a Canadian poet and translator, who was credited with publishing the first openly gay-identified collection of poetry in the history of Canadian literature.^[1]

Born in

Throughout his career he worked as a translator and taught literature and English as a second language in Mexico, Trinidad, Brazil, Greece and Thailand, including a stint as a private tutor to former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek.^[3] He also held academic positions at the University of Alberta and the University of the West Indies.^[3] He published The Forms of Life, the first gay-identified book of poetry published in Canada, in 1965.^[3] The book was financed by Dennis Lee and Margaret Atwood.^[4]

His later volumes of poetry included Path of Snow: Poems 1951-73 (1974), Later (1978) and Third World: Travel Poems (1994).^[3] A posthumous collection, The Collected Poems and Translations of Edward A. Lacey (2000), was also published.^[3] His poetry also appears in the anthologies Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine, An Anthology of Gay History: Sex, Politics & Culture (1991) and Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets (2007).

Throughout his career, Lacey also wrote many letters to friends, including Wicker,

While working in Thailand, Lacey suffered life-threatening injuries in 1991 when he passed out drunk in a street in Bangkok and was run over by a vehicle.^[3] He was transported back to Canada, where he remained largely bedridden in a rooming house in Toronto until his death in 1995.^[3]

Author Fraser Sutherland published a biography of Lacey, Lost Passport: The Life and Words of Edward Lacey, in 2011.^[6]

References