Christopher Dewdney (born 1951) is a Canadian poet and nonfiction writer whose work brings literary imagination into sustained contact with natural history, science, perception, and technology. Born in London, Ontario, he emerged from the small-press poetry culture of the 1970s and has become a significant voice in contemporary Canadian poetry. The University of Toronto Libraries’ Canadian Poetry Online profile notes the formative presence of both art and science in his early life, a conjunction that remains central to his writing.
His poetry includes Predators of the Adoration, The Radiant Inventory, Demon Pond, and the interconnected sequence A Natural History of Southwestern Ontario. Across these books, Dewdney draws on geological time, ecology, anatomy, dreams, and the built environment, often joining closely observed physical detail to speculative or philosophical inquiry. He has also published nonfiction concerned with consciousness, transhumanism, time, and the atmosphere, including The Immaculate Perception, Last Flesh: Life in the Transhuman Era, Soul of the World: Unlocking the Secrets of Time, and 18 Miles: The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather.
The catalog title Acquainted with the Night applies this wide-ranging approach to the cultural, scientific, and imaginative dimensions of darkness, organized around the hours of an ideal night. Dewdney won first prize in the CBC Literary Competition for poetry and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards on multiple occasions. His later recognition includes the 2007 Harbourfront Festival Prize and the 2018 Lane Anderson Award for 18 Miles.
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
