MEET ROBERT A. DUNCAN

Filmmaker. Novelist.

Robert A. Duncan is an acclaimed Canadian writer, filmmaker, and literary voice whose work bridges documentary storytelling, poetry, and fiction. 

A three-time recipient of the Canadian Writers’ Guild Award, Scottish-born Duncan has spent decades exploring the lives of literary figures through both screen and page. He was nominated for an Oscar as co-producer of the feature documentary Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry, a project that foreshadowed his fascination with troubled, brilliant artists and the thin line between genius and self-destruction.

His fiction debut, The Tinker’s Book: A Dublin Tale, draws on his deep knowledge of 20th-century poetry and his empathy for marginalized voices. The novel channels the spirit of writers like Auden, Larkin, and Behan, but through the raw, poetic lens of Harry Ward, an Irish Traveller whose fragmented manuscripts become a testament to survival, memory, and the power of being read.

His first non-fiction collection, Letters to Four Very Dead and Deeply Flawed Poets, (Vanguard Press U.K.) is a series of biographical sketches of W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dylan Thomas, described by the publishers as:  “Vividly researched and ‎poignantly told, it reveals the intimate struggles behind their public ‎myths-proof that poetry’s greatest power often springs from its creators’ ‎most flawed and fervent selves-and their enduring influence on ‎generations to come.‎”

His comic novel, Fifty-One, a Rant, is scheduled for release in December 2025 and “WORDS” a fictional biography of Dylan Thomas is due in 2026.

Duncan lives in Vancouver British Columbia, Canada.

Robert Duncan’s Writing Philosophy

“There are just over 480,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary. My ambition is to try and convince a chosen few of them to cooperate. I am trying to arrange words so they flow without hindrance inside each sentence, each paragraph, each page, and each chapter.

I imagine words as a huge flock of 480,000 individual and unruly wild sheep to be corralled and manoeuvred, recognising that each has its own individual character. My ambition is to ease them along as naturally as possible so they are content with each other and feel stronger together.

I want each word to be comfortable with its companions, firmly believing that they are where they should be, and convinced they got there with no effort or manipulation. That’s where the work comes in.”

– Robert A. Duncan.