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Poets
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Margaret Atwood
1939–
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario. She earned a BA from Victoria College, University of Toronto, and an MA from Harvard.
She is the author of over fifteen books of poetry, including The Door (Houghton Mifflin 2007); Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965-1995 (Virago Press Limited, 1998); and Morning in the Burned House (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), which was a co-winner of the Trillium Award.
Among her novels are The Testaments (Nan A. Talese, 2019), winner of the Booker Prize; The Blind Assassin (Doubleday, 2000), which won the Booker Prize and the Dashiell Hammett Prize; and The Handmaid's Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Also the author of short story collections, children's books, and nonfiction, Atwood's work has been translated into many languages and published in more than twenty-five countries. Among her numerous honors and awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Molson Award, the Ida Nudel Humanitarian Award, and a Canada Short Fiction Award. In 1986 Ms Magazine named her Woman of the Year.
Atwood has served as a Writer-In-Residence and a lecturer at many colleges and universities. She lives in Toronto.
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
The Door (Houghton Mifflin 2007)
Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965-1995 (Virago Press Limited, 1998)
Morning in the Burned House (Houghton Mifflin, 1995)
Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New 1976-1986 (Houghton Mifflin, 1987)
Interlunar (Oxford, 1984)
True Stories (Oxford, 1981)
Two-Headed Poems (Oxford, 1978)
You Are Happy (Harper & Row, 1975)
Procedures for Underground (Atlantic Little-Brown, 1970)
The Animals in That Country (Atlantic Little-Brown, 1968)
The Circle Game (Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1964)
Fiction
The Testaments (Nan A. Talese, 2019)
The Heart Goes Last (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2015)
MaddAddam (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2013)
The Year of the Flood (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009)
The Penelopiad (Canongate, 2005)
Oryx and Crake (Doubleday, 2003)
The Blind Assassin (Doubleday, 2000)
Alias Grace (Doubleday, 1996)
The Robber Bride (Doubleday, 1993)
The Handmaid's Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1985)
Bodily Harm (Simon & Schuster, 1982)
Lady Oracle (Simon & Schuster, 1976)
The Edible Woman (Atlantic Little-Brown, 1970).
Nonfiction
Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (Oxford University Press, 1995)
Second Words: Selected Critical Prose (Anansi, 1982)
Days of the Rebels 1815-1840 (Natural Science of Canada, 1977)
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Anansi, 1972)
By This Poet
6Habitation
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
This Is a Photograph of Me
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)