10 Favourite Volumes of Canadian Poetry

What the Living Won't Let Go

Lorna Crozier

Lorna Crozier was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, in May 1948. What the Living Won't Let Go is her 11th published collection of poetry. While its themes (family, death, guilt) are not new territory, Crozier's voice is strong and original throughout, bringing her dark, descriptive lullabies to the people she sculpts in words. This is very much a book of memory, of recollection, and the tone of the mind can range from sweet nostalgia to haunting doubt in an instant. At times humorous (as in Mildred, dedicated to the faithful, faceless woman inspecting the narrator's underpants for years), often thoughtful and even despairing, it is tough to let these poems go. Crozier lives in Victoria, BC with her partner and fellow poet, Patrick Lane. Together, the two edited a poetry collection called Breathing Fire: Canada's New Poets in 1995, which gave voice to new poets. The anthology was so successful that Breathing Fire 2 was born in 2004. Crozier was awarded the Governor General Literary Award for Poetry for her 1992 collection Inventing the Hawk.

 

Hero of the Play

Richard Harrison

AbeBooks' favourite Richard Harrison is an award-winning poet and diehard hockey fan. What could be more Canadian than that? In 2005, he wrote a poem called NH Elegy about his anger and sense of loss at what he sees as the great game of hockey's descent into a dollar sign, all about money and greed, rather than the noble sport, played for the love of the game, that it once was. Hero of the Play is entirely a collection of hockey poetry. If that sounds like it could be hokey, we understand - but it isn't. His words are crisp and beautiful, and hold as much grace as the gliding strides of skates on ice. His passion and love for the sport of hockey are apparent in every line, and it is impossible - especially for a hockey fan, but for any poetry lover, really - to not get caught up in the spirit of his writing. Harrison is the author of four other books of poetry, including Fathers Never Leave You, Recovering the Naked Man, Big Breath of a Wish, and Worthy of His Fall. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta, where he lives with his wife and their two children.

The Stubborn Particulars of Grace

Bronwen Wallace

Bronwen Wallace was a poet, author, feminist activist and founder of a woman's bookstore in Ontario. After she received her MA, she moved back to her birth town of Kinsgston and taught women's studies and creative writing. The Stubborn Particulars of Grace is the fourth book of poetry she published. There is an intimacy and honesty in the lines that at times borders on uncomfortable and painful. The lines are fierce, often dark, occasionally angry. Wallace clearly struggles with the themes of domesticity and possession, the pendulum of her feelings about relationships swinging between fierce love and devotion on one end to dependence and feeling trapped on the other, but the love she feels for the people in her life radiates through her words. Wallace died of cancer at age 44. Her published writings include the poetry collections Marrying Into the Family, Signs of the Former Tenant(currently unavailable on AbeBooks) , Common Magic, and Keep That Candle Burning Bright, as well as The Stubborn Particulars of Grace. The last was published posthumously, as was her only collection of short stories, People You'd Trust Your Life To. She also published a collection of essays, Arguments with the World, and a series of correspondence between herself and fellow poet Erin Moure called Two Women Talking.

Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962-1996

Al Purdy

One of the most influential and important poets ever to come out of Canada, Al Purdy published close to 50 books before his death in 2000 at the age of 81. As well as poems, Purdy wrote two memoirs and four books of correspondences (including one with Margaret Laurence, and one with Charles Bukowski, both fellow writers with whom he was long-time friends), as well as radio/television plays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). In Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets, some of the finest poems spanning 34 years of Purdy's career are thoughtfully selected by Purdy himself, with the assistance of editor Sam Solecki. The result is a thought-provoking, stunning offering spanning the whole range of human emotion and experience. The characters in its pages range from a boozer stuck in the drunk tank to Fidel Castro, and he visits such subjects as the "combination of ballet and murder known as hockey", farming, infidelity, poker, and epiphany, handling all with equal insight, grace and brilliance. Anyone claiming to be a lover of the written word should be required to own Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets.

Book of Longing

Leonard Cohen

If you've never read Leonard Cohen, now is the time. The Quebec native just gets better with age. His latest, Book of Longing, is a tender, affectionate bark of laughter, full of ruminations on love and God and mystery and the fumblings-along we do on the path of life on which we find ourselves, bewildered and blinking. The pages are charmingly covered with doodles, notes, drawings, self-portraits by Cohen. The book feels like it brings together a whole life-long as a lover, a genius, a poet, a musician, a man, and a fool, and is able to wrap its arms around the lot of them and smile. It's a beautiful gift to read, even when it hurts.

THE MOON

The moon is outside.
I saw the great uncomplicated thing
when I went to take a leak just now.
I should have looked at it longer.
I am a poor lover of the moon.
I see it all at once and that's it
for me and the moon.

Now 74, Cohen was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his music, for which he may be even better known than for his writing.

The Essential P.K. Page

P.K. Page

Born in England, Patricia Kathleen (P.K.) Page moved to Canada in 1919, at the age of three. She has lived in New Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta and now makes her home in British Columbia, in the capital city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. At age 92 she is writing more than ever. This latest collection of her poetry, The Essential P.K. Page, is aptly named. Any fan of her work, of Canadiana, of poetry in general, needs to own this book. The works contained within are dense and chewy, both requiring and creating thought, and keeping all five of the reader's senses involved in the pleasure of reading them. What makes Page's poems so unusual is their apparent rejection of the idea that thought and emotion, thinking and feeling, are different and must be kept separate. P.K. Page thinks with her heart, loves with her mind, and leaves us a wonderful, tangled mess of imagination and possibility. I hope she lives well into her triple-digits, and brings us many more portraits painted as beautifully, as movingly as The Essential P.K. Page.

Morning in the Burned House

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian treasure. Since publishing her first collection of poetry in 1961 (Double Persephone), she has written ceaselessly, as prolific as she is amazing. To date, she has written 13 novels, 10 collections of short stories, six children's books and 17 collections of poetry, as well as assorted forays into non-fiction, drawing and more. She has won the Man Booker Prize once and the Governor General Literary Award twice, being shortlisted for each multiple times. In Morning in the Burned House, Atwood shows she deserved every accolade. Whether with love and humour or rage and protest, Atwood tackles every incident, emotion and circumstance in its pages with equal grace, effectively skewering our most private, painful places with few words. Her poetry is remarkably accessible to anyone, and feels almost tangible in its richly crafted language. While the poems may seem sparse in places, it speaks to Atwood's tremendous skill as a poet that they nonetheless manage to elicit a recognition of truth in the reader.Of her volumes to date, it is in this that her voice rings most true and consistent.

Selected Poems of Irving Layton

Irving Layton

Born in Romania, Irving Layton emigrated to Montreal, Quebec with his Jewish family when he was a year old. The persecution of Jews among French Canada in those days was widespread. Layton's studies of socialism, political activism and loathing of bourgeois viewpoints led to his experimenting with writing, and the poet was born. He was a lover of women and had five wives in his life, the last one 48 years his junior. Layton enjoyed acclaim for his writing and opinions, particularly on Canada's television network, the CBC, where he became a regular instalment as a debater, and was well-known (and sometimes criticized) for his outspoken, blunt opinions. The Selected Poems of Irving Layton was published in 1977, and is a great place to start for those who may be unfamiliar with Layton's work. Throughout the 68-page volume, the words come alive on the page, rousing the reader to action, action, action, for time's a-wasting. There is a sense of urgency here, as though a life not lived fully is the worst crime of all. Some of Layton's poetry is ugly, even disturbing, but all are evocative and well-crafted. Irving Layton was legendary in the Canadian poetry scene. When he died in 2006 at age 93, he had published over 40 books.

Oedipal Dreams

Evelyn Lau

Evelyn Lau is a Chinese-Canadian author and poet. Lau was born in Vancouver and lives there to this day. Her upbringing was painful and tumultuous, and she felt trapped by her parents' expectations, to which she felt she could never live up.  She spent a portion of her early life as a runaway and prostitute on the streets of Vancouver, struggling with addiction. The themes of isolation, guilt, abused trust and loss of innocence are prevalent throughout all of Lau's writing.  Oedipal Dreams is her second collection of poetry, and was short-listed for a Governor General's Award. The poems in its pages are difficult to read and bristle with broken glass. The writing is sharp, conveying by turns anger and hollow numbness, then revealing a painful insight when least expected.  While the images in the poems could seem stale by the book's end, instead the repetition serves to echo the pleas from the voice of the writer. The honesty in the words is so naked the reader feels they should avert their eyes. The stark matter-of-factness with which Lau describes horrific and sorrowful events feels powerfully disturbing. While not a joyful read, this is a superbly crafted book of poetry. Lau's most recent collection of poetry, Treble, was published in 2005.

The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems

Michael Ondaatje

While his best-known work is a novel (The English Patient), Ontario's Michael Ondaatje is also an accomplished and tremendously talented poet. The Cinnamon Peeler offers selection poems from 1963-1990, and is a compilation impossible not to admire. The extraordinary gifts with language that Ondaatje possesses are perfectly demonstrated, in full range and scope, throughout the book. Ripe with historical and mythical allusion, the poems bring to life old themes in a new way. While the writing can tend to be overly lyrical, romantic or "purple", it's also absolutely gorgeous in its opulence. In darker passages, Ondaatje attacks subjects such as the glorification of violence with a sadness and bitterness so palpable it almost leaves a taste in the mouth. Ondaatje's famous talent for sensuality is demonstrated nowhere more thoroughly than these pages, as well, as in this excerpt from the title poem:

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

To date, Ondaatje has published 12 volumes of poetry and five novels.