Brian Chan was born in Guyana in 1949. He began to establish a reputation as a poet of talent with his work in Expression in the early 1970s, part of a group that included Janice Lowe (Shinebourne) and N.D. Williams. He had poems published in Caribbean Quarterly, Artrage, and One People’s Grief and is included in the Heinemann anthology of Caribbean poetry.
His first collection of poems, Thief With Leaf (1988) won the 1988 Guyana Prize. His work is challenging and experimental, exploring not only experience, but the fictions we create in making sense of experience. He moved to Canada in the 1970s and his poems explore a territory in which Guyanese memories filter into the Canadian present. He currently lives in Edmonton. His second collection of poems, Fabula Rasa, was published in 1994.
He is a musician (clarinetist) and accomplished painter.