- Person
- 1931-2020
Marion Beck was born in Rossendale, Lancashire, England on June 27, 1931, to Frederick Bruce Teal and Madge (Levell) Teal. After winning a scholarship, she went directly from grammar school to Leeds University to study geography from 1949 to 1953. She also obtained a teaching certificate, taught for a short time and began writing poetry.
Marion married fellow Leeds student Les Beck in 1956 and a short time later emigrated to Canada, living first in Regina, and in the early 1960s in Uranium City, where Les worked as resident geologist for the Department of Mineral Resources. Marion and Les and their three sons returned to Regina in 1966, a fourth son later joined the family.
Marion became involved with advocacy work for autism after learning their son was autistic. She became the first president of the Regina Society for Autistic Children in 1972 and also served as president of the Canadian Society for Autistic Children in 1977. She wrote numerous articles about autism, and in 1978 published a book about her experiences coming to terms with an autistic child, The Exorcism of an Albatross. She also began writing poetry again, with her first poem, Tourist Trap, published in 1980 in Alberta Poetry Yearbook.
Many of Beck's poems have been published in a number of literary magazines, such as Wascana Review and Green's Magazine, and other poems have been presented on the radio (such as on CBCs radio program Ambience). She has written a number of chapbooks including Notebook of an Immigrant (1983), Counting the Threads: A Poem for a Narrator and One Past, One Present Voice (1985), Poems for Amazons (1995), Trench in the Rockies: A Poetic Ecotour (2000), and Dry: Is the Long Term Forecast (2002).
During the 1980s, Beck worked for the Saskatchewan Writer's Guild as well as Grain Magazine (poetry editor), served on the City of Regina's Arts Commission, and in 1981 she was president of the Wascana Writer's Group. She was an active member of the Regina Council of Women, serving as its President in the mid-1980s, and also wrote a history for this organization entitled: Some of Ishbel's Ladies: The Founding of the Regina Cottage Hospital. In the late 1980s she represented the Provincial Council of Women on the University of Regina Senate.
In 1991 Beck won the Short Grain Prose Poem Competition, and in 1995 and 1996 won the People's Poetry Competitions. She has judged the Milton Acorn Peoples Poetry Book Award. She was a member of the Literary Networks Poetry Panel, and was twice a winner in the Political Poetry Contest, a competition run by the magazine.
Marion Beck died in Regina on June 1, 2020.