Michael Ondaatje

Douglas Barbour

When Michael Ondaatje came to Canada in the 1960s, his innovative poetry and prose swiftly began to fuel the new Canadian literary renaissance. As his contemporary Margaret Atwood has said, Ondaatje was quietly recognized as "one of the most vital and imaginative of the younger poets." The Dainty Monsters (1967) first established his critical and popular reputation, displaying the emotional energy and creative imagination that would soon characterize his entire oeuvre. Only four years later, Ondaatje won the first of his many awards, Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award, for his extraordinary prose-poem The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1971). In 1992 he became the first Canadian writer to win the Booker Prize for The English Patient.^ Today, as his richly metaphorical texts enjoy international renown, Ondaatje's fame is especially fascinating, for he has neither...

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