Erling Friis-Baastad

Geomantic riposte: 'Wood Spoken'

Born in Norway and raised in Colorado and Virginia, Erling Friis-Baastad emigrated to Toronto in 1969 and has spent most of his adult life in the Yukon Territory. He is a widely published journalist, essayist, and book reviewer, and works as an editor with the Yukon News in Whitehorse. With Canadian short story maven Patricia Robertson, he has edited (if not pioneered) Writing North, an anthology of Yukon writers from the last decade of the twentieth century. Friis-Baastad’s accomplished collection Wood Spoken: New and Selected Poems showcases the thirty-year career of the poet who is credited with bringing contemporary poetry to the territory, and is considered a landmark event in its literary scene, and is most certainly a warm and generous ‘wayfinder’ for those agile poets snowshoeing after him.

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