Phyllis Webb worked for many years as a writer and broadcaster for the CBC, where she created the radio program "Ideas" in 1965 and was its executive producer from 1967 to 1969.

Her 1980 work Wilson's Bowl was hailed by Northrop Frye as "a landmark in Canadian poetry."

As Stephen Scobie once wrote, the work of Phyllis Webb "has always been distinguished by the profundity of her insights, the depth of her emotional feeling, the delicacy and accuracy of her rhythms, the beauty and mysterious resonance of her images-and by her luminous intelligence."

Phyllis Webb received the BC Gas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, the Order of Canada in 1992 and the 1982 Governor General's Award for Selected Poems: The Vision Tree.