Raymond Holmes Souster OC (January 15, 1921 – October 19, 2012) was a Canadian poet whose writing career spanned over 70 years.
[2] Robert Fulford wrote of Souster in 1998: "You can't read the history of Canadian poetry without encountering him, yet somehow he remains obscure.
[4] Apart from four years' service in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, he worked at the bank until retiring in 1984.
"Souster brought several young poets to Contact Press, and gave an important boost to the new poetry with New Wave Canada.
"[6] The young poets included Margaret Atwood, whose first book, "The Circle Game" went on to win the Governor General's Award in 1966.
[2] The early 1960s were a prolific and distinguished period for Souster, culminating in his own Governor General's Award in 1964 for his Collected Poems, The Colour of the Times.
A city comes to life only after writers have invented it, and Souster has been among Toronto's inventors, adding a layer of poetic reality to the abstractions of asphalt, glass, and brick.
His Toronto poems work like photographs in the Henri Cartier-Bresson tradition, inscribing small pieces of space and time on the memory, catching a moment as it flies.
His poems describe life in Toronto, ordinary people and the daily events, feelings and experiences of modern city living.