Phil Hall was born in 1953 & raised on farms in the Kawarthas region of Ontario. He attended the University of Windsor in the 70s, where he received an MA in English and Creative Writing.

First book, Eighteen Poems, published Mexico City 1973.

Since then he has published 13 other books of poems, 7 chapbooks and a cassette of labour songs. His newest collection, The Little Seamstress, (Pedlar Press) will have its book launch at POW!

Trouble Sleeping (2000) was nominated for the Governor General's Award for poetry.

In 2005, Brick Books brought out An Oak Hunch, which was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006. Of this work, the jury said: "These are poems of ferocity and humility, of vulnerability and wit, poems whose skilled complexities elucidate the lyric disturbance of melody, memory and self. Grasping his intimate line like a kind of loved and fortuitous handtool, what Hall constructs is a voice that attends to the familial and psychic histories submerged in landscape, in all their bitterness and gorgeousness."

He has taught writing and literature at the Kootenay School of Writing, York University, Ryerson Polytechnical University and many colleges. Hall has been poet-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario, the Sage Hill Writing Experience (Saskatchewan), The Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and elsewhere.

In Fall, 2007, BookThug published Hall's long poem, White Porcupine, plus a revised second edition of his essay/poem, The Bad Sequence.

Over the years, Hall has collected two full decks of random playing cards from the streets, and numerous albums of found photographs. He calls all of this ephemera his "Pedestrian Archives."