Sixteen Maritime poets explore the relationship between poetry and place in conversations with Anne Compton, the winner of the 2005 Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
In responses that are at once feisty and articulate, informed and informal, the poets respond to questions about the writing process, their attachment to place, and the nature and significance of poetry in the 21st century. The immediacy of the conversational format captures perfectly the urgency with which present-day Maritime poets are writing about their region.
Posing essential questions about creativity, Meetings is a valuable primer on Maritime culture, as well as an essential exploration of issues surrounding the cultural unity in this country.
In addition to the Governor General’s Award, Anne Compton has twice won the Atlantic Poetry Award, in 2003 for Opening the Island, and in 2006 for Processional.
An accomplished critic, Anne Compton conducts this thoughtful inquiry with the intelligence and passion that informs her own poetry.
Poets included in the book are:
George Elliott Clarke
Carole Langille
Sue Goyette
Thomas O’Grady
Elisabeth Harvor
Alan Wilson
Sue MacLeod
Peter Sanger
Brent MacLaine
John MacKenzie
Brian Bartlett
Bob Moore
Liliane Welch
Ross Leckie
John Smith
Anne Simpson
Click here to see the Table of Contents.
Reviews:
"Meetings with Maritime Poets is an enormously valuable book; it teaches the reader to think as poets do and to see a territory through the lens of its best words. It shows how poets record and create the meanings of a place. . . It also enjoins the reader to celebrate, with John Smith, 'the peachy fullness of things.'"
-- Books in Canada
"The 16 interviews gathered here are richly detailed, illuminating, stimulating and sometimes provocative. Their qualities stem from Anne Compton's ideal qualifications and self-effacing approach: she is an astute, broadminded critic and herself an outstanding Maritime poet."
-- The New Brunswick Reader
Anne Compton was awarded the 2006 Governor General’s Award for Poetry for Processional, which also won the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Her first collection, Opening the Island, won the 2004 Atlantic Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. More recently she was awarded the Alden Nowlan Award for excellence in English language literary arts, presented by the New Brunswick Arts Board. Anne is author of A.J.M. Smith: Canadian Metaphysical, editor of The Edge of Home: Milton Acorn from the Island, and co-editor of Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. She teaches at the University of New Brunswick at Saint John.
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