Poet. Newfoundlander. Mixed/adopted Mi’kmaw. Life is hyphenated.

Walbourne-Gough’s father’s family lived in Crow Gulch until the community was legally ushered out, mostly relocating to Corner Brook’s first social housing project, Dunfield Park. Walbourne-Gough holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC-Okanagan. His poetry has appeared in Riddle Fence, Canadian Literature, Prairie Fire, Newfoundland Quarterly, QWERTY, Forget Magazine, the Capilano Review, and Contemporary Verse 2. Crow Gulch is his debut collection. It won the E.J. Pratt Poetry Award in 2021.

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“These deeply engaging poems — courageous, shrewdly observed, disillusioned — give sharp, personal expression to the harsh-beautiful landscape of western Newfoundland and the human community precariously, stubbornly rooted there. A sense of conflict drives through this work, a reflection of the tradiitonal struggle to gain a living from the sea and rocky land but also a raw exploration of the conflict between poverty and privilege, honesty and propriety.” - John Steffler, author of Lookout

“Crow Gulch announces an important poet. The differences Douglas Walbourne-Gough explores between class and ethnicities are as hard as Newfoundland’s rock, as shifting as the foundations of a forcibly resettled Crow Gulch. This book is a conversation between a rude landscape, the displaced or dispossessed, and a narrator searching for belonging.” - Stephanie McKenzie, author of Before the Country: Native Renaissance, Canadian Mythology

“Bent low and clund to a coast, Walbourne-Gough lets the land shape him. Brilliant and weathered observation interlaces family and archive to render present and necessary the memory of Crow Gulch. Here is a day’s labour, a fretting walk along the tracks, a house ‘that lets in snow at the seams,’ grandmother's kitchen. Hear still ‘her peals of laughter against the far shore and all that lives on in this book.’” - Cecily Nicholson, author of Wayside Sang

“These poems convey the sensibilities of racialized, marginalized, working-class people whose rough lives are peppered with small pleasures like a warm featherbed and trout fishing with family, and with striking expressions of loyalty and affection. Following his ancestors, for whom a name could be ‘so wrought with work, so heavy, now, with love,’ the poet treats Crow Gulch as a place and a name that persists, ‘preceding and dragging / behind him like a loose bootlace.’” - Melanie Dennis Unrau, Canadian Literature

“One of the most captivating elements of Douglas Walbourne-Gough’s Crow Gulch is the powerful humanism running through the collection.” - James M. Fisher, Miramichi Reader

“These poems challenge derogatory erasures and rework them by telling stories about the community’s inhabitants, drawn from oral histories, family memory, and imagining.” - Kim Trainor, PRISM

“Walbourne-Gough’s poems are intimate, in moments personal, often tracing family lineage. The poet’s questions are universal to those who seek, and anyone who has had a ruptured sense of belonging. His lyrical style grabs hold of you, and doesn’t let go.” - Shannon Webb-Campbell, MUSKRAT

“A small stone, warm to the touch, mostly smooth but with just enough rough, satisfying edges to run your thumb along. That is the texture of Douglas Walbourne-Gough’s debut poetry book, Crow Gulch. It is a book of ‘hard beauty.’ . . . It is a stone worth keeping and returning to.” - Emily Skov-Nielsen, The Fiddlehead

“I especially enjoyed ‘Influences’, a poem that looks back on the places . . . food . . . music . . . and people.” - Consumed by Ink

“Walbourne-Gough is so aware of and precise with words. . . . He disinters the houses, neighbours, and family from their scrapped, shunted-aside history, while reimaging and releasing his own past. Crow Gulch is superb.” - Joan Sullivan, The Telegram

“Walbourne-Gough captures the woodsmoke and the indifferent slope of the land with a grace and a lust for language. . . [His] love for the land, for his family, and for his own ever-evolving identity shines through like the morning sun on a frozen gulch in Newfoundland, proving himself to be a rising star too bright and promising not to notice.” - Brianna Ferguson, Vancouver Weekly

“Engaging, tender, and astute. . . . Crow Gulch shows us a poet with a distinct style and pioint of view.” - Annick MacAskill, Atlantic Books Today

“[An] impressive debut collection. . . . Walbourne-Gough conjures a landscape of harsh, rugged terrain in these vivid, image-driven poems.” - Barb Carey, Toronto Star