Winston T. Gylles Biography

Born in the late forties, in then small town Ottawa, Ontario Gylles recalls competing for gold stars in the poetry memorization contest set up by a grade eight teacher called Sister Barbara Ann. He obtained gold stars for the recitation of The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert William Service and The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. When he actually wrote his first poem remains enshrouded in a past far to distant to permit easy retrieval. They were most likely in the genre 'Roses are greenish, Violets morose...'

After completing an Honours degree in Psychology, he enrolled in a Journalism program and frequently wrote for the Charlatan, a varsity rag. A few news articles later, Gylles realized that journalism was not his bag and dropped out.

In 1970 he worked as the poetry editor of one of Ottawa's first literary magazines, the short lived Pod. There he published his first poems. During the '80's he wrote a few small bilingual volumes of verse, now encased in ISBN vaults. He also published some short stories in small literary magazines circulated mainly in Québec.
Through the '90's and '10's family concerns required he concentrate on an exciting and rewarding career as a computer programmer. During this time he wrote some epic algorithms and scintillating functions in C,4D, Lingo, Perl and even odd strains of BASIC, for a battalion of high powered 'chines. Though he still wrote verse occasionally, he seemed lost to the literary world.

Since retiring in 2009 he has happily returned to his first love, versification. In May 2011 he published a uni-lingual book of verse in french. Subsequent to this publication Gylles set off on an extended journey through south east Asia, concentrating on countries like India and Thailand with short forays into Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore and Indonesia.

The poems submitted here represent his return to the English language after a lengthy interlude. Though he is traveling, the subject of his poetry is not always or necessarily in accordance with any physical locality. Sometimes it appears as though Gylles is moving through an interior landscape, both strange and confusing, projected onto an external support.