Phyllis Webb (April 8, 1927 – November 11, 2021) was a Canadian poet and broadcaster. Webb's poetry had diverse influences, ranging from neo-Confucianism to the field theory of composition developed by the Black Mountain poets. Critics have described her collections Naked Poems (1965) and Wilson's Bowl (1980) as important works in contemporary Canadian literature. As a broadcaster at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the 1960s, Webb created programs including Ideas and Extension, a television program about Canadian poetry. She left the CBC in 1967 to return to British Columbia, where she remained for much of her life. Early life and education Phyllis Webb was born on April 8, 1927, in Victoria, British Columbia. She attended the University of British Columbia, where she received a BA in English and philosophy in 1949, and McGill University. In 1949, aged 22, she ran as a candidate for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in the 1949 British Columbia general election. In 1957 Webb won a grant that allowed her to study theatre in France. Poetry Webb's first poems were published in Contemporary Verse, a magazine run by Alan Crawley. Her first book publication was in Trio, a collection of poems by Eli Mandel, Gael Turnbull, and Webb published by Raymond Souster's Contact Press. In the 1950s, Webb became interested in Eastern philosophy; critic Pauline Butling suggests that Webb's early work shows the influence of neo-Confucianism's metaphysics of time. Webb's approach shifted in the 1960s toward a model of poetry influenced by the field theory of composition developed by Charles Olson and the Black Mountain poets. The field theory was a jumping-off point for Naked Poems, which she started in 1963 and published in 1965. George Bowering describes Naked Poems as a "key text in contemporary Canadian literature". Wilson's Bowl (1980) adopts a new poetics centred on a critique of political and interpersonal power, drawing from Haida stories "to undermine the binary structures of Western thought". Critic Northrop Frye called it a "landmark". Webb composed the poems in Hanging Fire (1990) by waiting for words to arrive in her mind. She said in an interview that adopting this passive stance allowed her to focus more on the external world. Webb taught creative writing at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and the Banff Centre, and was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta from 1980 to 1981. Webb's poems often concern death, particularly