LiberPress Award 2009

Mark Abley was born in England on 13 May 1955. He is a poet, journalist, publisher and the author of essays and studies. In 1978 he moved to Toronto, where he began his career as an independent writer. He has contributed to various newspapers: Maclean’s, Saturday Night, Canada Forum and the Montreal Gazette. Since 1983, Abley has lived in the Montreal area. He has prepared several documentaries for the Ideas programme, on CBC Radio. In 1986 he wrote the travel book Beyond forget:Rediscovering the prairies, after having travelled for three months in the region where he grew up.

He has written three books of poetry, a book for children and some essays and studies. His poetry collections have been selected by the Quebec Writers’ Federation Award. But his most famous book is probably Spoken Here:Travels Among Threatened Languages (2003). When a language dies, Abley thinks that the poems and stories that have been recounted for thousands of years and reflect a unique and different way of understanding the world die at the same time.

We must, therefore, learn to see in languages the treasures of practical knowledge and imagination. This is the main theme of the book. In 2005 Abley was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. His new book, The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches From the Future of English, was published in May 2008. During his research he visited Los Angeles, Singapore, Tokyo and other cities where languages are undergoing far-reaching changes. In the book, Abley describes new phenomena, such as Spanglish in the United States, Japlish in Japan, the influence of hip-hop and the extraordinary power of cyberspace. Abley has contributed to many books and magazines, he has given courses for writers for the Quebec Writers’ Federation and the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has given lectures and workshops in different schools and universities in Canada, and at various literary festivals.

He is the literary executor of Canadian poet Anne Szumigalski.