Roy Miki

Born in Ste. Agathe, Manitoba to second generation Japanese-Canadian parents, Miki grew up on a sugar beet farm before moving to Winnipeg.^[1][2][3] His family was forcibly relocated West to Manitoba where he was born in 1942 on said sugar beet farm, and interned during the Second World War.^[1] He earned his B.A. from the University of Manitoba, M.A. from the Simon Fraser University, and Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.^[1][4] Miki taught contemporary literature at Simon Fraser University before retiring and held the title of professor emeritus.^[1] He lived in Vancouver. In the 1980s, Miki was "instrumental" in fighting for redress from the federal government for the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.^[2][4]

In 2002, Miki's book of poetry, Surrender, won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.^[4] His poetry focuses on questions about identity, citizenship, race, and place.^[4] He is the author of the critical study, Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing (1998), In Flux: Transnational Shifts in Asian Canadian Writing (2011), The Prepoetics of William Carlos Williams (1983), and an annotated bibliography of the poet and novelist George Bowering (1990).^[4]

In 2006, Miki was made a Member of the Order of Canada and received the 20th annual Gandhi Peace Award for the truth, justice, human rights, and non-violence exemplified in his redress work.^[2][5] The same year, he also received the Thakore Visiting Scholar award and the Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy.^[6] In 2007, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.^[4] In 2009, he was made a Member of the Order of British Columbia.^[4]

Miki died on 5 October 2024, at the age of 82.^[7]