Patricia Lowther was born on July 29, 1935 in Vancouver, British Columbia, she grew up in the neighboring city of North Vancouver, in the family of Arthur and Virginia Tinmuth. Her parents were of the working class, and, though she was bright and demonstrated a love of writing at an early age.
Education
Lowther left school at the age of sixteen to take a clerical job. She took creative writing classes during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Career
When Patricia was ten years old, her first published poem appeared in The Vancouver Sun. It wasn't until 1968 that she published her first collection, This Difficult Flowering, with Very Stone House, a small Canadian poetry press. In 1972, "The Age of the Bird", a long poem inspired by revolutionary politics in South America, was published as a broadside by Blackfish Press.
The companion poem, "Regard to Neruda", was written for Pablo Neruda, one of Lowther's political and literary inspirations. She was co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets, and the BC Arts Council. She taught at the University of British Columbia.
Milk Stone, published in 1974 by Borealis Press, became Lowther's breakthrough into Canadian mainstream literature. A Stone Diary was submitted to Oxford University Press in 1975. In late September of that year, Lowther disappeared.
Two years after the poet's murder, Oxford published A Stone Diary. In 1980, a collection of Lowther's early and unpublished poems, Final Instructions, was also published.
In 1953, Patricia married Bill Domphousse, but they divorced in 1957. Her second husband Roy Lowther, whom she had married in 1963, was convicted of her murder in June 1977. Her daughters are the poet Christine Lowther, Beth Lowther, and Kathy Lyons (died in 2015). Her son is Alan Domphousse.