McGill Libraries
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Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Sommer, Richard, 1934-2012
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1934-2012
History
Richard Jerome Sommer was born on August 27, 1934, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He was a Canadian professor, poet, and environmentalist. He was educated at Harvard University (Ph.D.) and was a Professor of Creative Writing in the English Department at Sir George Williams University in Montreal (later to become Concordia) for 34 years. He served three decades as a volunteer game warden in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where he led a citizens' environmental group in a seven-year battle, ultimately successful, to save the Townships' Pinnacle Mountain from developers. Sommer was an accomplished flautist who, in his later years, volunteered in hospitals and personal care homes, playing for the sick and elderly. He published ten books of poems, including "Homage to Mr. MacMullin" (1969), "The Blue Sky Notebook" (1974), "left hand mind" (1976), "Milarepa" (1976) and "Fawn Bones" (1986). In 2004, Sommer, a Buddhist, was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the verse journal "Cancer Songs" (2011) was an important part of his response to this challenge.
He was married to Victoria Tansey for over forty years. He died on February 13, 2012, in Sutton, Quebec.