Identity area
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Person
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Clarke, George Elliott
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Description area
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History
George Elliott Clarke was born February 12, 1960 in Windsor, NS. He grew up in Halifax. He went to the University of Waterloo (B.A., Hons., 1984), Dalhousie University (M.A., 1989), and Queen's University (Ph.D., 1993). He was the inaugural E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, where he still works as a professor of English and Canadian literature. He was the fourth Poet Laureate of Toronto in 2012, and is currently the seventh Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His writing focuses on Black Canadian culture (“Africadia”), race, freedom, social justice, and love. In 2001 Clarke won the Governor General's Award for poetry for his book Execution Poems. In 2008, Clarke was made an honorary Fellow of the Haliburton Literary Society, the oldest literary society in North America, at the University of King's College, Halifax. He was also inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2008 and the Order of Nova Scotia. He has won Portia White Prize for Artistic Achievement (1988) (Portia White is also his great-aunt), Governor-General's Award for Poetry (2001), the National Magazine Gold Medal for Poetry (2001), the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award (2004), and the prestigious Trudeau Fellow Prize (2005). He has published dozens of books, articles, poems, essays, and plays.