Terrible, terrible news. One of Canada’s truly great poets has died. PK Page, dead at 93. She will be missed.

A companion of the Order of Canada, the British-born, Canadian-reared Patricia Kathleen Page was considered among Canada’s most esteemed writers.

“She was one of our early explorers in poetry. She’s one of the ones who made it possible for Canadian poets to believe in themselves,” B.C. poet Lorna Crozier told CBC News.

Crozier likened Page to a “female version” of Canadian literary icon Al Purdy.

“She was such an intelligent poet. I can think of no one in literature — Canadian and worldwide — who had such an impeccable ear and such a marvellous sense of choosing the absolute, precise, exact word for what she wanted to say. There was a kind of marvellous sharpness of diction used to describe very mysterious, very ephemeral things. No one did that better than P.K. Page.”