Arthur Motyer

Who was Arthur Motyer?

Dr. Arthur Motyer was a Canadian educator, playwright and novelist.

Born in Hamilton, Bermuda, the son of building contractor and land developer Ernest Motyer and Edith Brunning, he was educated at Saltus Grammar School and later studied English literature at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. In 1945, after graduation and short periods in the Canadian Army and the University of Toronto, he travelled to England on a Rhodes Scholarship where read English at Exeter College, studying under Nevill Coghill. His namesake uncle, Arthur John Motyer, had also been a Rhodes scholar from Bermuda. Returning to Canada, from 1948 to 1950 he taught English and drama at the University of Manitoba and at then moved to the Eastern Townships of Quebec where he took a teaching position at Bishop's University, which he held for the next twenty years. Among his students there were the future novelist Michael Ondaatje and Scott Griffin, founder in 2000 of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Griffin has spoken about Motyer's influence on his attitude towards poetry:

[Motyer] was able to convey the technical possibilities open to poetry that I had not fully understood.