George McWhirter

Who is George McWhirter?

George McWhirter is a Northern Irish-Canadian writer, translator, editor, teacher and Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate.

The son of a shipyard worker, George McWhirter was raised in a large extended family on the Shankill Road in Belfast. In 1957 he began a “combined scholarship” studying English and Spanish at Queen’s University, Belfast, and education at Stranmillis College, Belfast. His tutor at Queen’s was the poet Laurence Lerner, and he was a classmate with the future literary critic Robert Dunbar and the poets Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane. After graduating, McWhirter taught in Kilkeel and Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, and in Barcelona, Spain, before moving to Port Alberni, B.C. Canada. After receiving his M.A. from the University of British Columbia, where he studied under Michael Bullock and J. Michael Yates, he stayed on to become a Full Professor in 1982 and Head of the Creative Writing Department from 1983 to 1993. He retired as a Professor Emeritus in 2005. He was associated with PRISM international magazine from 1968 to 2005. McWhirter is the author and editor of numerous books and the recipient of many awards.