Gregory Betts

Gregory Betts (born 1975) is a Canadian poet, editor and professor.
He is a professor at Brock University with a speciality in Canadian and avant-garde literature. He is the author of seven books of poetry, editor of nine books of experimental writing in Canada, and author of the monograph Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (University of Toronto Press, 2013). He was named the Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University in 2014 and the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin in 2018.
Life and work.
Betts was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, but was raised in Toronto, Ontario. He graduated from Queen's University with a BA in English in 1998. He studied with Stephen Scobie, Misao Dean, Smaro Kamboureli, and George Bowering at the University of Victoria, where he graduated with an MA in 2000. Betts received his PhD in English literature from York University, supervised by John Lennox, Steve McCaffery, and Ray Ellenwood. He is a Professor at Brock University with a speciality in Canadian and Avant-Garde Literature.
He is the author of seven books of poetry, editor of nine books of experimental writing in Canada, and author of the monograph Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (University of Toronto Press, 2013). He writes for "The Canadian Encyclopaedia" and his work is included in the anthologies" Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing" (2011), "The Sonnets: Translating & Rewriting Shakespeare" (2012), "Concrete & Constraint" (2018), amongst others. In addition to his books, Betts is the author of chapbooks and text collaborations with visual artists, including Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel, and Neil Hennessy. His most recent work is the co-edited collection Avant Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries (co-edited with Christian Bök, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019), a collection of 28 leading scholars and poets of the Canadian avant-garde.
He lives in St. Catharines, Ontario with his wife and two children and directs The Centre for Canadian Studies at Brock University.
Reception.
The "University of Toronto Quarterly" wrote, "Betts has created not only an invaluable archive of what it means to be 'modern' in Canada - the writings read like a cross-section of compacted layers social, material, and spiritual crisis in urban and rural Canada...but to the wider context of aesthetic, political, and spiritual fault lines of modern culture in English Canada." In 2014, Betts was named the Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University. In 2017, he received a City of St. Catharines Arts Award ("Jury's Pick") and in 2018, he was named the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at the University College of Dublin, Ireland.