Earle Alfred Birney (13 May 1904 – 3 September 1995) was a Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honour, for his poetry.

Life

Birney was born in Calgary in what was then the District of Alberta, and raised on a farm in Erickson, near Creston, British Columbia. His childhood was somewhat isolated. After working as a farm hand, a bank clerk, and a park ranger, he went on to college to study chemical engineering, but graduated with a degree in English. He studied at the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of London.

During his year in Toronto he became a Marxist–Leninist. Through a brief and quickly annulled marriage to Sylvia Johnston, he was introduced to Trotskyism. In the 1930s, he was an active Trotskyist in Canada, the United States and Britain, and was the leading figure in the Socialist Workers League, but he disagreed with the Trotskyist position on World War II and left the movement.

In 1995, Birney died of a heart attack.

Writing

Fiction

Birney's World War II experiences inspired the creation of the title character of his comic military novel, Turvey (1949), a saga of one hapless soldier's struggle to get to 'the sharp end' of the fighting in the Netherlands and Germany during 1944–1945. The character of Turvey is a fascinating melange of country boy innocent, common sense utilitarian and town fool, and seems to have been fashioned as a foil to the eccentrically pseudo-sophisticated Canadian military life as illustrated in the novel. The book has been described as "uproariously ribald",

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  • Canadian Poetry Online: Earle Birney - Biography and 6 poems ("Vancouver Lights", "From the Hazel Bough", "Sestina for the Ladies of Tehuántepec", "The Bear on the Delhi Road", "El Greco: Espolito", "Plaza de la Inquisición")
  • Earle Birney in The Canadian Encyclopedia
  • Order of Canada Citation
  • University of British Columbia Archives
  • Earle Birney Papers at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library