Zwicky, Jan, 1955- : A native of Alberta, Jan Zwicky is a poet, philosopher, and musician.
Zwicky is the author of eight books of poetry: Where Have We Been (1982), Wittgenstein Elegies (1986; rev. 2015), The New Room (1989), Songs for Relinquishing the Earth (1996/1998), Twenty-one Small Songs (2000), Robinson's Crossing (2004), Thirty-seven Small Songs and Thirteen Silences (2005), and Forge (2011). Her works of philosophy include Lyric Philosophy (1992), Wisdom & Metaphor (2003), Plato as Artist (2009), Auden as Philosopher (2012) and Alkibiades' Love: Essays in Philosophy (2014). She has published one work of fiction, The Book of Frog (2012). In addition, she has published Vittoria Colonna (2014), a selection of translations accompanied by photographs by mathematician Robert Moody, and an exchange of letters with poet Tim Lilburn, Contemplation and Resistance (2003). She also collaborated with Brad Cran on an anthology of blues lyrics, Why I Sing the Blues (2001). Her selected poems, Chamber Music: The Poetry of Jan Zwicky (2014), was edited by Darren Bifford and Warren Heiti, and she is the subject of Lyric Ecology: An Appreciation of the Work of Jan Zwicky edited by Mark Dickinson and Clare Goulet (2010). Her work has appeared in translation in a number of languages, notably Italian, Spanish, and French. Zwicky has also been an editor for Brick Books since 1986.
Zwicky was awarded the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry in 1999, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prize) in 2005, and she has been shortlisted for the Governor General's award for Poetry (2004), the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction (2004), the Pat Lowther Award (for many books) and the Griffin Poetry Prize (2012). She received faculty-wide teaching awards from both the University of New Brunswick (1996) and the University of Victoria (2002), and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Mount St Vincent University (2014).
After first starting a degree in physics, Zwicky received a BA in philosophy from the University of Calgary (1976); this was followed by an MA (1977) and PhD (1981) in philosophy from the University of Toronto. Zwicky's major interests are focussed in epistemology, in philosophy of language (particularly the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein), in Greek philosophy (especially the work of Heraclitus and Plato), and in environmental philosophy. A deep concern for the natural world led her to develop some of Canada's first courses in environmental philosophy during the 1980s. She has taught at a number of North American universities including Princeton, the University of Waterloo, the University of Western Ontario, the University of New Brunswick, the University of Alberta, and the University of Victoria, where she held a tenured position in the Department of Philosophy from 1999 to 2009. At a number of these institutions she designed and taught general introductions to the humanities, as well as teaching philosophy and, in some cases, literature. Zwicky was on faculty at the Banff Centre Writing Studio in 1995, 2001 and 2010 and was Director of Poetry at Banff for the May Studio in 2011.
Zwicky is a violinist and for several decades worked as an orchestral musician as well as a university teacher. Between 1972 and 2010, she was a member of numerous ensembles across Canada, such as the Calgary Philharmonic and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. She has also played in chamber music ensembles including the Austin String Quartet (1980-1982), New Aeolian Chamber Ensemble (1987-1990), and the Festival Consort (2005-2008).
Jan Zwicky's multiple and interdisciplinary interests intertwine in her works of poetry and philosophy. Lyric Philosophy (1992) argues that philosophy must expand its self-definition beyond analysis if it is to be true to its own ideals and to many of the works it includes in its canon. Its two central notions, lyric and domesticity, are developed against the backdrop of a detailed characterization of systematic analysis. The text's format is double: Zwicky's own fragments on verso pages are paced against excerpts from other thinkers, including musicians and artists as well as philosophers and scientists, on the recto pages. She developed the concept of lyric thought further in a second dual-text work, Wisdom & Metaphor (2008). Both books connect environmental devastation to cultural neglect of lyric awareness; their format induces the experience of perceiving multiple, inter-determining non-linear connections which, she argues, are the foundation of lyric comprehension. She has also bridged the arts and mathematics in the essay "Mathematical Analogy and Metaphorical Insight" in Alkibiades' Love (2014), and in her use of mathematical proofs in Wisdom & Metaphor. Her books Plato as Artist and Auden as Philosopher further illustrate ways in which philosophy and poetry intersect in her thought.
Zwicky has been invited to give several distinguished lectures and lecture series: the Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton (2011), the Ralph Gustafson Lecture (2011), the Carol Shields Memorial Lecture (2013), and the Alex Fountain Memorial Lecture (2015). She has lectured widely in Europe and North America.
Zwicky grew up in Western North America, moving frequently, but with the family farm near Mayerthorpe, Alberta, as a central focus. As an adult, she lived in Toronto (1976-1979), Waterloo (1979-1982 and 1983-1986), and Princeton (1982-1983); and with her partner of two decades, the poet Don Mckay, she lived in or near London, Ontario (1986-1990), and then in Upper Gagetown, New Brunswick (1990-1992), Edmonton (1992-1994), Fredericton (1994-1996), and Victoria, BC (1996-2006). She lived in Victoria for three more years after 2006. Since 2009 she has lived on Quadra Island, BC. with her husband, poet, linguist, and typographer, Robert Bringhurst.
