>The latest Poetry Wales has a feature on Canadian poets who include Don
>Domanski, Kristjana Gunnars, Patrick Lane, Jeanne-Marie de Moissac, Dennis
>Lee, Tim Lilburn, George Elliott Clarke, John Livingstone Clark and John
>Barton. No doubt, Douglas Barbour will be able to advise us on context as
>the notes in the mag are pretty minimal altho' apparently all the poets
>operate somewhere along a spectrum 'from empirical realism to mythopoesis'.
>Well, don't we all...?
>cheers
That's an interesting list, David:
Domanski is an east coast poet, known as a kind of surrealist,
post-surrealist. I know some poets who consider him one of the best in
Canada today.
Kristjana Gunnars is a colleague here, whose poetry is often about love &
loss, usually handled with a sharp understatement. Her prose works are, in
my opinion, more 'poetic' than her verse. They are brilliantly subversive
of popular prose narrative. & mix genre expectations in witty & un settling
ways.
Lane has been considered one of the major lyricists of masculinity for some
time now; also good at small narratives of violence etc. I recognize his
gifts but am not one of his fans...
I don't know de Moissac.
Dennis Lee is a major critic & poet since the 60s; he is also famous for
his children's verse.
Lilburn was out Writer-in-residence last year; he writes a kind of
nature-meditational poetry with a terrific sense of natural detail. A
recent collection of essays is also meditational, & beautiful prose.
Clarke is an Afro-Canadian poet from Nova Scotia, writing out of that
experience with a rather interesting take on rhetorical possibilities.
Makes fine use of folksongs, legend, etc. But his last book is a retelling
of Shelley's The Cenci in terms of slave narratives: Beatrice Chancy.
Clark I don't know.
John Barton is an interesting gay poet, & editor of the magazine Arc. His
work has become more experimental lately, but it tends to what I call the
anecdotal.
All of which is highly personal.
These are poets of the mid-generation: most of them are in their late 30s
or 40s. I would say this selection represents a strain of Canadian poetry
much admired, & more reviewed than some others. This selection utterly
ignores both the strong feminist strain of Canadian poetry and the various
strands of experimentation to be found here. It's valid, but far too
limited...
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
My roof was once firm
yet now it cannot even
keep the stars out.
Christopher Dewdney
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