J. Michael Yates was born in Fulton, Missouri on April 10, 1938. After studies at the Universities of Missouri and Michigan, he received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Having taught in Ohio and Alaska, Yates arrived in Canada in July of 1966 and remained on the staff of the Creative Writing Department at UBC from 1966 to 1971, meeting Charles Lillard there in the fall of 1967. He participated in the founding of quot;Contemporary Literature in Translationquot; with Andreas Schroeder in 1968 and co-edited "Volvox: Poetry from the Unofficial