Welcome to the Poetry Site of Brian Henderson

Biography

Brian Henderson is the author of nine volumes of poetry (including a deck of visual poem-cards, The Alphamiricon), the latest of which, Nerve Language, was nominated for the Governor General’s Award, and about which the jury wrote, “Terrifying and beautiful, the language in this book is an incendiary crossing of wires. These poems are as likely to break you open as they are to explode.” In “The Journal of Canadian Poetry,” Glenn Wilmot stated that Year Zero “explores with extraordinary depth and intimacy the boundary line joining the creation and loss of life, affirming the “insistence of things” in a language that transcends the differences between thought and feeling, word and thing.” In “Books in Canada” Phil Hall wrote of Smoking Mirror: “This is certainly a poetry of a magnitude and import similar to, say, Don Domanski’s or Louise Gluck’s…. Very accomplished…and elegant to read aloud.” A new book, Sharawadji, is forthcoming from Brick Books in May 2011.

His work, both critical and poetic, has appeared in a number of literary journals. He has a PhD in Canadian literature, is the Director of WLUPress and lives in Kitchener Ontario with his wife, Charlene Winger, who directs a mental health clinic in Halton.