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David William McFadden (October 11, 1940 – June 6, 2018) was a Canadian poet, fiction writer, and travel writer.
McFadden was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and began writing poetry while still in high school, publishing in literary magazines, corresponding with beat writer Jack Kerouac, and becoming a proofreader for the Hamilton Spectator newspaper.[1] As he gained success as a poet he quit the newspaper devoting himself full-time to literature in 1976.
McFadden served on the editorial board of Coach House Press, and as a contributing editor for SwiftCurrent and Canadian Art Magazine. He was a monthly columnist for Quill and Quire and Hamilton This Month. He taught at David Thompson University Centre for three years and was a member of the production team of the literary journal Brick.[1]
McFadden's poetry critiques the commercialism and shallowness of modern society. His work, with its overt humour, reflections on contemporary urban life, and interest in the mistakes of the imagination is influenced by Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery and the New York School of the 1950s, as well as the Beat writers of the 1960s such as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. His work focuses on Canadian subjects, settings and personalities. His book of 100 Baudelaire-inspired prose poems, Gypsy Guitar, was called "everyone's favourite book of poems" by George Bowering.
McFadden is a founding member of GOSH (Gentlemen of Sensible Height), and a former member of International PEN, the Writer's Union of Canada, the League of Canadian Poets, and the Last Minute Club.[1]
In 2012, McFadden was diagnosed with logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia, a type of Alzheimer’s disease that affects a person’s memory of words, and shortly thereafter he became one of the first participants in a study of the effects of aerobic exercise on people already affected by dementia.[2]
