Jay Macpherson

Jean Jay Macpherson (June 13, 1931 – March 21, 2012) was a Canadian lyric poet and scholar. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls her "a member of 'the mythopoeic school of poetry,' who expressed serious religious and philosophical themes in symbolic verse that was often lyrical or comic."

Life

Jay Macpherson was born in London, England, in 1931. She was brought to Newfoundland in 1940 as a 'war guest'. She took high school at Bishop Spencer College, St. John's, and Glebe Collegiate, Ottawa.

In 1951 Macpherson received a BA from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1951, followed by a year at University College in London. She received a BLS from McGill University, and then completed her MA and PhD at Victoria College, University of Toronto, both supervised by professor and critic Northrop Frye.

Macpherson published poetry in Contemporary Verse in 1949. Her first book was published in 1952.

In 1954 Macpherson began her own small press, Emblem Books, which published her second volume, O Earth Return. Between 1954 and 1963, Emblem Books published eight chapbooks featuring the work of Canadian poets, including Dorothy Livesay, Alden Nowlan, and Al Purdy.