Roy Roy Miki was born on a sugar beet farm in Manitoba where his second-generation Japanese Canadian parents were forcibly settled during the Second World War. He has achieved success as a poet, editor, critic and teacher. Miki received a B.A. from the University of Manitoba, a M.A. from Simon Fraser University and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. He taught contemporary literature at Simon Fraser University for many years. In July 2006, Miki was named a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions in voluntary service and arts-writing. He is also a member of the Order of British Columbia. Miki and his wife Slavia live in Vancouver.
The non-fiction works highlighted on this page represent only a portion of Miki’s prose writing.
Poetry
Flow: New and Collected Poems
Edited by Michael Barnholden.
Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2019.
PS8576 .I31 A3 2018
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
A stunning collection from Governor General’s Award winner Roy Miki, Flow presents all of this critically acclaimed writer’s poetry – from his collections Saving Face, Random Access File, Surrender, There, and Mannequin Rising – as well as a substantial chapter of new, previously unpublished works. Including a foreword by poet and critic Louis Cabri, extensive interviews with Miki by the collection’s editor, Michael Barnholden, and an exhaustive bibliography, Flow is the definitive edition of Miki’s work. Also included are numerous full-colour photographs and photocollages, a practice Miki has become increasingly drawn to in recent years; in the book’s previously published sections and in the much-anticipated section of brand-new work, Miki’s poems and photographic works engage in a mutually enriching dialogue…
Poetry
Mannequin Rising
Vancouver: New Star Books, 2011.
PS8576 .I32 M28 2011
Publisher’s Synopsis
In the three sequences of poems and photo-collages that form the heart of this book, the figures of mannequins emerge from local spaces–Kitsilano and Granville Island in Vancouver, Shibuya and Ginza in Tokyo–that are bathed in the ubiquitous affects of commodity culture in our everyday relationships.
Poetry (Chapbook)
Market Rinse
Calgary: DisOrientation Chapbooks, 1993.
Limited ed. of 300 copies.
Poetry
Random Access File
Red Deer, Alta.: Red Deer College Press, 1995.
Poetry
Saving Face: Poems Selected 1976-1988
Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1991.
PS8576 .I31 S3 1991
Publisher’s Synopsis
Roy Miki’s first collection of poems is a brilliant discourse which sounds the originary, unheard of voices of family and community from the perspective of the “sansei” or third-generation Japanese Canadian. These exquisitely balanced poems trace the fragility of ancestral bonds. Diamond-edged, they expose those subtle connections which tie the personal to a collective past scarred by the old wounds of internment and denied identity.
Poetry
Surrender
Toronto: Mercury Press, 2001.
PS8576 .I31 S97 2001
Publisher’s Synopsis
Roy Miki’s brilliant intermixture of the lyrical with the political, the moment with history, the brutal banality of the document with the tender touch of a hand, builds in a tour de force of clarity and beauty. His daring engagements with the provisional, shifting formations of identity and language place him among the most original and powerful of contemporary poets.
Awards and Honours
2002 Governor General’s Literary Award–English Poetry (Winner)
Poetry
There
Vancouver: New Star Books, 2006.
PS8576 .I31 T44 2006
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Canada, Asia, Europe provide the local conditions where the authorial ‘i’ engages with globalization, with the collision between otherness and spatialization. The serial poems comprising There contain a multiplicity of voices drawn from those the poet hears in conversation, advertising, historiography and scientific proceedings, and incorporate photos and photomontages.
Fiction (Juvenile, Picture book)
Dolphin SOS
Co-author: Slavia Miki.
Illustrated by Julie Flett.
Vancouver: Tradewind Books, 2014.
PZ7 .M543 D65 2014
Publisher’s Synopsis
Based on a true events, Dolphin SOS recounts the story of three dolphins trapped in an ice-covered cove on the coast of Newfoundland. After the authorities fail to provide assistance, some young people take matters into their own hands in order to save the distressed dolphins.
Awards and Honours
2015 Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize (BC Book Awards)(Winner)
Fiction (Juvenile, Chapter book)
Peggy’s Impossible Tale
Co-author: Slavia Miki.
Illustrated by Mariko Ando.
Vancouver: Tradewind Books, 2021.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Peggy’s Impossible Tale is told in the voice of a remarkable guinea pig. Full of action and surprises, it is guaranteed to captivate the attention of beginning readers. Peggy learns how to communicate with the loving family that adopted her, and goes on to win a much coveted prize for her accomplishments.
2023 Chocolate Lily Book Award, Chapter book/Early novel (Winner)
Non-fiction
Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing: Essays
Toronto: Mercury Press, 1998.
PS8576 .I31 B76 1998
Publisher’s Synopsis
In these moving, lyrical, and articulate essays, Roy Miki explores the issues and realities that comprise, for him, a writing life: redress, history, memory, “race,” language, displacement–and their interrelationships–as well as the voices of those known and loved whose wisdom rings even after death, Roy Kiyooka and bpNichol.
Non-fiction (Memoir)
Gaman – Perseverance: Japanese Canadians’ Journey to Justice
Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023.
FC106.J3 M53 2023
Non-fiction
In Flux: Transnational Signs of Asian Canadian Writing
Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2011.
PS8089.5 .A8 M55 2011
Publisher’s Synopsis
In this collection of essays … Roy Miki … investigates the shifting currents of citizenship, globalization, and cultural practices facing Asian Canadians today through the connections of place and identity that have been forged through our developing national literature.
Non-fiction
Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement.
Co-author: Cassandra Kobayashi.
Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991.
D768.15 .M53 1991
Non-fiction
Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian call for Justice
Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004
FC106.J3 M55 2004
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
This passionate and important book—part memoir, part critical examination—explores the Japanese Canadian redress movement of the late 20th century, which sought compensation from the federal government for the internment of citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.
Anthology
First Chapter: : The Canadian Writers Photography Project
Denton, Don, and Roy Miki. “Roy Miki.” In Denton, Don. First Chapter: The Canadian Writers Photography Project. Banff, AB: Banff Centre Press, 2001, 62-63.
Anthology
Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors’ Reflections
Miki, Roy. “Critical as Creative Reading.” In Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors’ Reflections. Danielle Schaub, photographer and ed. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2006, 92-93.
Anthology (Prose)
Open TeMiki, Roy. “On Mannequin Rising.” In Open Text: Canadian Poetry and Poetics in the 21st Century. Volume 3, edited by Roger Farr. (North Vancouver, BC: CUE Books, 2013), 75-78.
PS8293.1 .O64 2008 v.3
Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Dobson, Kit. “Global subjectivities in Roy Miki’s Surrender.” In Transnational Canadas: Anglo-Canadian Literature and Globalization. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009, 169-178.
PS8071 .D62 2009
Joseph, Maia, Christine Kim, Chris Lee and Larissa Lai, eds. Tracing the Lines: Reflections on Contemporary Poetics and Cultural Politics in Honour of Roy Miki. Vancouver: Talonbooks 2012.
PN1042 .T73 2012
Wilson, Sheena L. “Paradigms Lost and Re-membered: The Case of the Japanese Canadian Experience in Canadian Media, Cinema, and Literature.” Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta, 2006.
Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
Links
Publisher New Star Books
Publisher NeWest Press
Publisher Raincoast Books
Publisher Red Deer College Press
Publisher Talonbooks
Publisher Tradewind Books
Roy Miki Fonds at Simon Fraser University Library