Joel Michael Yates (April 10, 1938 – April 15, 2019), known as J. Michael Yates, was a Canadian poet, dramatist, fiction writer, and corrections officer. Early life and career Yates was born in Fulton, Missouri and raised in Germany. He did graduate degrees at the Universities of Missouri and Michigan, and received an honorary doctorate from Ohio University. Yates emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1966. Yates was a widely published author of poetry, fiction, drama, translations, and philosophical essays. He has edited several anthologies and founded and edited several literary magazines. His work has been translated into most of the western languages and several of the eastern ones and his drama for radio, television, and stage have been produced both nationally and internationally. His last rank as a university professor was Distinguished Professor. He won many literary prizes including the Major Hopwood Awards (both poetry and drama the same year) and the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts and Sciences from University of Missouri, The Look of Books (for Volvox: Poetry from the Unofficial Languages of Canada in English Translation), The Olympic Arts Award for Schedules of Silence. He has also been a logger, a powder monkey, a motorcycle racer, a broadcasting executive, a broadcaster, an advertising executive, a print salesman, a commercial photographer, a publisher. He retired after seventeen years as a Maximum Security Prison Guard and SWAT team member, and taught languages, history of ideas, and science with his wife in their home in Vancouver. Death Yates died on April 15, 2019, at his home in Vancouver. He was survived by his wife and two stepsons. Bibliography Poetry Spiral of Mirrors - 1967 Hunt in an Unmapped Interior - 1967 Cantacle for Electronic Music - 1967 Parallax - 1971 The Great Bear Lake Meditations - 1971 Nothing Speaks for the Blue Moraines - 1973 Breath of the Snow Leopard - 1974 The Qualicum Physics - 1975 Esox Nobilior Non Esox Lucius - 1978 Fugue Brancusi - 1983 Insel: The Queen Charlotte Islands Meditations - 1983 Various Northern Meditations - 1984 The Completely Collapsible Portable Man - 1984 Schedules of Silence - 1986 During - 1999 Hongyun: New and Collected Shorter Poems 1955-2005 - 2005 Fiction Man in the Glass Octopus - 1968 Fazes in Elsewhen - 1976 Torque - 1988 Torpor: Collected Fiction, 1960-1987 - 1989 Fiction and drama The Abstract Beast - 1971 Drama Night Freight