Wilfred Watson was professor emeritus of English at Canada's University of Alberta for many years.
16 Facts About Wilfred Watson
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Wilfred Watson was an experimental Canadian poet and dramatist, whose innovative plays had a considerable influence in the 1960s.
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Wilfred Watson was born in Rochester, England in 1911, the oldest child of Louisa Claydon and Frederick Walter Watson.
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In 1941 he married Sheila Martin Doherty, who as Sheila Wilfred Watson would write the novel The Double Hook.
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On graduating, Wilfred Watson enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy for the balance of World War II.
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Wilfred Watson began his academic career in 1949 as a lecturer in English at the University of British Columbia.
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Wilfred Watson taught at the University of Alberta in Calgary from 1951 to 1953.
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Wilfred Watson lived in Paris in 1955 and 1956, as the recipient of a Canadian Government Overseas Fellowship.
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In 1961, Sheila Wilfred Watson was hired as a professor of English by the University of Alberta.
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The Studio Theatre became an important venue for the production of Wilfred Watson's plays, beginning with Cockcrow and the Gulls in March 1962.
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Wilfred Watson had a short play, The Woman Taken in Adultery, performed at the Edmonton Fringe Festival in 1987.
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Wilfred Watson retired in 1977 and moved in 1980 to Nanaimo, British Columbia with his wife Sheila.
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Wilfred Watson died there in 1998 at the age of 87.
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Wilfred Watson introduced a unique form he called Number-grid Verse in his third book, 1978's I Begin With Counting.
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Wilfred Watson used Number-grid Verse in his next book of poetry, Mass on Cowback.
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Wilfred Watson's papers are located in the University of Alberta archives.