Douglas Barbour, poet, critic, and reviewer, is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Alberta, where he has taught creative writing, poetry, Canadian literature, twentieth century poetry and poetics, and science fiction and fantasy. Books of poetry include Visible Visions: The Selected Poems of Douglas Barbour (NeWest Press 1984), which won Alberta's Stephan Stephannson Award for poetry, and Story for a Saskatchewan Night (rdc press 1989). More recently, Fragmenting Body etc. (NeWest Press 2000), Breath Takes (Wolsak & Wynn 2002), A Flame on the Spanish Stairs (greenboathouse books 2003), and Continuations, with Sheila E. Murphy (University of Alberta Press 2006). Critical works include Daphne Marlatt and Her Works, John Newlove and His Works, bpNichol and His Works (ECW Press 1992) , and Michael Ondaatje (Twayne Publishers 1993). Lyric/Anti-lyric: essays on contemporary poetry appeared from NeWest Press in 2001. Transformations of Contemporary Canadian Poetry in English appeared from Adam Marszalek in Poland in 2005. Essays have appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, Denmark. He has delivered papers at conferences on Canadian Studies and modern poetry, in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Scotland, and, of course, Canada.

Poetry readings in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, and the United States; and with Stephen Scobie as the Sound Poetry ensemble, Re: Sounding, in Canada, the U.S., Austria, Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, Germany, and Australia & New Zealand (major appearances include the 12th International Sound Poetry Festival in New York, 1980, the annual conference, Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien, E.V., Grainau, West Germany, 1985, NZ*SAGAS, Laufen, Germany, 1993, the triennial conference, European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, Graz, Austria, 1993, Poetry and History Conference, University of Stirling, 1996, EyeRhymes, Edmonton, 1997). He was inaugurated into the City of Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame in 2003.