Jamie Reid

Who is Jamie Reid?

Jamie Reid is a Canadian poet, writer, and arts organizer/activist. He was born in Timmins, Ontario and came of age on the west coast of Canada.

Reid co-founded the influential poetry journal TISH in Vancouver in 1961 with George Bowering, Frank Davey and Fred Wah. He published his first collection of poems, The Man Whose Path Was on Fire, in 1969. A short time later he joined the Communist Party of Canada and for a time, stopped writing poetry in favour of political work, "because [he] didn’t have a way of working the language of politics into the language of poetry."

Reid returned to poetry and cultural criticism in the late 1980s, with a special interest in jazz expressed in many of his works. There is a 25-year gap between his first book of poetry and his later books. Married to painter Carol Reid since the 1960s, his home in North Vancouver continues to be a hub of literary activism and activity, from small press experiments like the local/international avant garde magazine DaDaBaBy to events and memoir writings in honour of a variety of literary figures who are, notably, human beings.