Internationally known bilingual Canadian poet, sonneteer, haijin and the inhouse poetry critic for the UK e-zine, Poetry Life & Times, Richard Vallance was born in Guelph, Ontario on March 11 1945.  Richard is a graduate of Sir Wilfrid Laurier University (HBA, 1968) and The University of Western Ontario (MLS, 1975), and is a retired reference librarian at the University of Ottawa.  In October 1983, Richard Vallance won the $1,000 Data Courier Award for Excellence in Online Published Papers for his outstanding contributions to the field of Library Science.

Richard has spent most of his life in Canada, where he has gone on several long and arduous canoe trips in the wilderness of Northern Ontario and Quebec.  These canoe trips have served as the primary inspiration for so many of Richard Vallance's quintessentially Canadian poems and sonnets.  Richard considers himself as a Neo-Romantic poet par excellence, insofar as he explicitly espouses the ideals of the great Romantic poets, most notably Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his Defence of Poetry (1821).  Richard's Neo-Romantic poetry idealism naturally reflects the literary scene of twenty-first century Canlit.

Richard writes the monthly sonnet and poetry critical review, The Vallance Review, Poetry Life & Times.  As of January 2005, he has written 41 reviews on such great historical poets as Francesco Petrarch, Sir Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Archibald Lampman, Rupert Brooke and Walter de la Mare, and on many contemporary poets, including Esther Cameron, editor of The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Madison, Wisconsin, Jim Dunlap, Sara Russell and C.S. Snow.

Richard Vallance moderates three poetry groups on Yahoo groups, Canadian Zen Haiku canadien, Yahoo's fifth largest haiku group; the busy The New Pleiades Mirror; and Sonnet: Describe Adonis.

He is the editor of three Canadian e-zines, Canadian Zen Haiku canadien ISSN 1705-4508, Poetry in Emotion = la Poésie à s'émouvoir ISSN 1705-4516 and SONNETTO Poesia ISSN 1705-4524, all catalogued with the National Library of Canada and all indexed here, Poesie's laissez-faire: Poetry Journals

Richard Vallance's poetry is frequently published in The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Madison, Wisconsin.  To date, Richard has published two poetry books, one in hardcover, one in CD format.  The second one, Canadian Spirit Voices © 2003 ISBN 1-878431-44-7, is the equivalent of over 500 pages, and includes over 125 of his poems, almost 300 of his haiku, a novella, DENIZEN, 32 of his translations of ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, German and French poems into English poems, and his 100 pp. essay, The Historical Evolution of the Sonnet AD 1230 to the present.  For more information on Richard's book, visit: Canadian Spirit Voices.

Richard is the editor-in-chief of an all-new international anthology of some 28 poets writing in English, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Turkish, The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = la Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade ISBN 1-878431-52-8, which is scheduled for publication in the summer of 2005 and of The Human Face = Le Visage humain, an anthology of Canadian and American poetry, which is to be published in 2006.

Richard's international poetry portal is Poesie's laissez-faire Faire Foire, a registered Canadian domain.