Dennis Lee (author) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Dennis Lee
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Lee at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival in 2018
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| Born | Dennis Beynon Lee August 31, 1939 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Education | Master of Arts, English |
| Alma mater | University of Toronto |
| Genre | Poetry, essays |
| Notable works | Civil Elegies, The Gods, The Ice Cream Store, Alligator Pie |
| Notable awards | Governor General's Award, Order of Canada |
| Spouse | Susan Perly |
Dennis Beynon Lee OC (born August 31, 1939) is a Canadian poet, teacher, editor, and critic born in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a children's writer, well known for his book of children's rhymes, Alligator Pie.
Contents
Life
After attending high school at the University of Toronto Schools, Lee received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Toronto, where he coauthored articles in Acta Victoriana with Margaret Atwood. He taught English at the University's Victoria College from 1963 until 1967, at which time he became 'resource person' for Rochdale College.
Also in 1967, Lee co-founded House of Anansi Press with Dave Godfrey, and served as its editorial director until 1972. From 1974 to 1979 he was a consulting editor for Macmillan of Canada.
He was a writer in residence at Trent University in 1975, and at the University of Toronto in 1978-1979.
He is married to Susan Perly, a writer and former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist.
Writing
In 1967 House of Anansi published Lee's first book of poetry, Kingdom of Absence, "a sequence of 43 sonnet variations." Lee followed that up the next year with a long meditative poem, "Civil Elegies". (Civil Elegies and Other Poems, a revised version of that work collected with some newer poetry, won Lee the Governor General's Award in 1972.)
Lee began writing for children as part of his goal of "Reclaiming language and liberating imagination"; his poems are about the language and activities of the daily lives of children, expanded into the realm of imaginary play and fantasy. His best known work is the rhymed Alligator Pie (1974).
Lee wrote the lyrics to the theme song of the 1980s television show Fraggle Rock and, with composer Philip Balsam, many of the other songs for that show. A number of the songs were released on the albums Fraggle Rock: Music and Magic, in 1993, and Jim Henson's Muppets present Fraggle Rock, in 1984. The second album was nominated for a Grammy Award, which it won jointly with Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends. Balsam and Lee also wrote the songs for the television special The Tale of the Bunny Picnic. Lee is co-writer of the story for the film Labyrinth.
Lee is also the co-editor of The University Game (1968, with H. Edelman), "in which he calls for freedom from inhibiting educational institutions" a la Rochdale; and the author of Savage Fields: An Essay in Literature and Cosmology (1977), which "explores the interrelationship between 'earth' and 'world'—i.e. nature and civilization, or instinct and consciousness—all with particular application to a critical analysis of works by Michael Ondaatje and Leonard Cohen."
Alasdair Gray adapted a line from Lee's poem Civil Elegies into 'Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation' into a slogan Gray has become known by, inscribed on Scottish Parliament's Canongate Wall.
Recognition
In addition to his 1972 Governor General's Award, Lee twice won the CACL Bronze Medal for a children's book: in 1974 for Alligator Pie, and in 1977 for Garbage Delight. He also won the Vicky Metcalf Award, for body of work for children, in 1986, and the Mr. Christie's Book Award (for The Ice Cream Store) in 1991.
In 1993, Lee was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1995 he received an honorary doctorate from Trent University, and won a Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement.
In 2001 Lee became Toronto's first Poet Laureate, serving in that position until 2004.
In 2009, Lee received an honorary doctorate from Victoria College in the University of Toronto.
Recordings
- Dennis Lee [selections].[Sound recording]. Toronto: High Barnet, 1970.
- Alligator Pie and Other Poems. [sound recording]. New York: Caedmon, 1978.
