Don Domanski

Don Domanski (1950–2020) was born and raised in Sydney, on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. He lived briefly in Toronto, Vancouver and Wolfville, before settling in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he lived for most of his life. Author of nine collections of poetry, his work is infused with a deep and abiding interest in mythology, religion and esoteric philosophy, and has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Czech, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

He mentored other poets through the Banff Centre for the Arts Wired Writing Studio and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Mentorship program. Also a visual artist, his work often appeared on the covers of his books. He collected fossils for many years, before turning his attention to meteorites and Stone Age tools. He is credited with discovering the neural arch of a 350-million-year-old (Lower Carboniferous) amphibian previously thought to have gone extinct in the Devonian period.

His poetry collections Wolf-Ladder (1991) and Stations of the Left Hand (1994) were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and in 1999 he received the Canadian Literary Award for Poetry from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. All Our Wonder Unavenged (2007) was honoured with the Governor General’s Award, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Award, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize, and Bite Down Little Whisper (2013) won the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award.

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