Phil Hall’s poetic practice spans almost fifty years. In 2011, Hall won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in English for his collection of essay-poems, Killdeer, which the jury called “a masterly modulation of the elegiac through poetic time.” Killdeer also won Ontario’s Trillium Book Award, and was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize (as was his 2005 Brick Books collection An Oak Hunch). Hall’s 2016 collection, Conjugation, was praised by Douglas Barbour as “a major addition to a major oeuvre.” Niagara & Government (Pedlar Press, 2020) is his nineteenth book of poetry, and Toward a Blacker Ardour (Beautiful Outlaw Press, 2021) is his twentieth.
Hall has published many small press chapbooks, and is a visual artist who works in collage. He has taught writing at the Kootenay School of Writing, Ryerson University, Banff Centre, and Toronto New School. He has been writer-in-residence at Sage Hill Writing Experience (Saskatchewan), Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon), Queen’s University, University of Ottawa, and most recently at University of New Brunswick, Fredericton (2018/19). While at Queen’s in 2012 he inaugurated an annual lecture series, The Page Lectures, in honour of Kingston poet and artist Joanne Page. Hall has lived in Windsor, Vancouver and Toronto, and now lives in a log house outside Perth, Ontario.
Purchase Toward a Blacker Ardour from Beautiful Outlaw Press
Purchase Niagara & Government from Pedlar Press