Peter Dale Scott

Peter Dale Scott (born 11 January 1929) is a Canada|Canadian poet and a former English professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The son of noted Canadian poet and constitutional lawyer F. R. Scott and painter Marian Dale Scott, he is known for his anti-war stance and his criticism of U.S. foreign policy dating back to the Vietnam War. He spent four years (1957-1961) with the Canadian diplomatic service. He retired from the UC Berkeley faculty in 1994.

Literary Works

Scott has described his poem Minding the Darkness as his most important, though he concedes that "Like other long poems by older men. . . it toys dangerously with abstract didactic principles."Introductory matter to excerpts from Minding the Darkness, http://www.flashpointmag.com/scott1.htm. The poem is intended as the culmination of a major poetic project of which Coming to Jakarta was the inception.

Investigator

Scott has researched and written several investigative books about the role of the "deep state" (as opposed to the "public state"). However, Scott rejects the label of "conspiracy theory" and has used the phrase "deep politics" to describe his heavily-footnoted political writing. The investigative bent has spilled over into his works of poetry, some of which must contain marginal notes to explain to readers which documents or real-world news events are being referred to. His most recent book, The Road to 9/11 from the University of California Press, deals with historical and geopolitical context of the events of 9/11, and describes "how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11.

An interesting aspect of Scott's work that combines both his investigating interests and his poetry is illustrated by The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 http://lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>.