Janine Canan Explained

Janine Canan (1942-2020) was an American poet, essayist, story writer, translator, and editor. She was also a practicing psychiatrist in northern California.

Biography

Born Janine Burford on November 2, 1942, in Los Angeles, California, she graduated from Stanford University cum laude in 1963. She married Michael Canan, a law student, and moved to Berkeley where she did graduate study and taught at the University of California.

In her thirties, she attended New York University School of Medicine and completed a psychiatric residency at Herrick and Mount Zion Hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1979, Canan has been active in private psychiatric practice, consulting for various clinics and organizations, and volunteered for Amma's Embracing the World charities.

Her first book of poems, Of Your Seed, appeared in 1977 through a National Endowment for the Arts grant to Oyez Press. Since that time, Canan has authored many books of poetry, translations, anthologies, essays and stories.

In 1989, her anthology, She Rises like the Sun: Invocations of the Goddess by Contemporary American Women Poets, illustrated by Mayumi Oda, considered "one of the best books from the women's spirituality movement" by Booklist and widely used in Women's Studies.

Canan's translations of the German Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler, Star in My Forehead, was a Booksense and City Lights Books "pick".

Canan also published a collection of short stories, Journeys with Justine, featured in Longstoryshort, illustrated by Cristina Biaggi, in 2007, along with a first collection of essays, Goddesses, Goddesses, followed by a second collection in 2015, My Millennium: Culture, Spirituality, and the Divine Feminine.

Canan's writing has appeared in anthologies and journals including the San Francisco Chronicle, New Directions, Exquisite Corpse, WeMoon, Femspec, Tower Journal, Journal of Archaeomythology and the Journal of Hindu Studies.

Canan died October 26, 2020.[1]

Canan's papers are housed in the University of Iowa's Special Collections, and her books in the University of California at Berkeley Bancroft Library.

Publications

References

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Janine Canan Obituary (2020) San Francisco Chronicle. .