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Woodcock, George (1912–1995) By Spencer, Jasmine
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George Woodcock was a British-Canadian poet, political activist, biographer, travel writer, novelist, dramatist, translator, and literary critic. He was born in Winnipeg, but spent his childhood and early adulthood in England. Returning to Canada in 1949, he moved ‘back to the land’ on Vancouver Island and then to the city of Vancouver, where he lived until his death in 1995. Woodcock’s poetics and politics were informed by pacifism and anarchism. William Morris, Thomas Hardy, George Orwell, Roy Fuller, Julian Symons, Gabriel Dumont, the Dalai Lama, and Simon Gunanoot, a Gitksan rancher, contributed to Woodcock’s world view. Woodcock taught at the University of British Columbia for over two decades and was the first editor of the journal Canadian Literature (1959–present), editing it from 1959 to 1977.