Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada

A note to US-based customers: All Lit Up is pausing print orders to the USA until further notice. Read more

Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada

Edited by: Ross Leckie, Anne Compton, Laurence Hutchman, Robin McGrath

Atlantic Canada is enjoying a renaissance unknown since the days of Alden Nowlan, Milton Acorn, and John Thompson. Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada features work by 60 of the region’s finest poets in a volume that will whet appetites for more. The earlier poetry renaissance began in 1945, with the establishment of The Fiddlehead magazine. In this new volume, the present Fiddlehead editor Ross Leckie, and his collaborators Ann Compton, Laurence Hutchman, and Robin McGrath, showcase the lasting effects of that earlier renaissance and confidently forecast that the newest generation of Atlantic poets will help to make poetry a pre-eminent literary form in Canada once again.

Coastlines provides expansive reading pleasure because of the astonishing range of poetic intelligences it represents and the myriad ways poets find to work and rework the topography of Atlantic culture and landscape. The earliest poems in the anthology were written in the 1950s by the acknowledged greats — Acorn, Nowlan, and Thompson — and by Alfred Bailey, Elizabeth Bishop, and Charles Bruce. The collection also features work by senior poets such as Kay Smith, M. Travis Lane, Fred Cogswell, and Douglas Lochhead, and mid-career poets such as Elisabeth Harvor, Harry Thurston, and John Steffler. Poets of the post-1995 renaissance include Anne Simpson, Sue Sinclair, Michael Crummey, and George Elliott Clarke, who won the 2001 Governor General’s Award; Lynn Davies, Sue Goyette, and Carole Langille have all been recent finalists, and both Brian Bartlett and matt robinson have won the Petra Kenney Memorial International Poetry Prize. The newest voices in Coastlines belong to Tammy Armstrong and Geoff Cook, whose work was selected from manuscripts published in 2002.

AUTHOR

M. Travis Lane

One of Canada’s most distinguished writers, M. Travis Lane lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She received her B.A. (Junior PBK) from Vassar College, and her M.A. and PhD. from Cornell University. She and her husband Lauriat Lane came to New Brunswick in 1960. Travis taught briefly at Cornell and at the University of New Brunswick and is a Honorary Research Associate with the English department at U.N.B. She is a member of the Voice of Women for Peace and a Raging Granny, a member of the Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick and a Lifetime member of the League of Canadian Poets.

She has published nineteen books of poetry and two of prose. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in Literary Arts, and the Lieutenant Governor?s Award for High Achievement in Literary Arts. She was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2015.

AUTHOR

Ross Leckie

Ross Leckie was born in Lachine, Quebec, in 1953. He has degrees from McGill, Concordia and the University of Toronto, and teaches literature and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. His work has appeared in leading Canadian and American literary reviews, and he is the author of a previous collection of poems A Slow Light (Signal Editions, Véhicule Press, 1983).

AUTHOR

Anne Compton

ANNE COMPTON teaches in the Department of Humanities and Language at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John Campus.

AUTHOR

Laurence Hutchman

Laurence Hutchman was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Toronto. He received his PhD from the Université de Montreal and has taught at a number of universities. For twenty-three years he was a professor of English literature at the Université de Moncton at the Edmundston Campus. Hutchman has published 13 books of poetry, including Foreign National, Beyond Borders, Reading the Water, Personal Encounters, Two Maps of Emery, The House of Shifting Time, Fire and Water (in collaboration with Eva Kolacz) and Swimming Toward Sun Collected Poems: 1968-2020. He has also co-edited the anthology Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada and edited In the Writers’ Words.

His poetry has received many grants and awards, including the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence and has been translated into numerous languages. In 2017 he was named poet laureate of Emery, north Toronto. He lives with his wife, the artist and poet, Eva Kolacz in Oakville, Ontario.

AUTHOR

Robin McGrath

Robin McGrath is the author or editor of fifteen books, including Trouble and Desire (1995), Escaped Domestics (1998), Hoist Your Sails and Run (1999), Donovan’s Station (2002),Covenant of Salt (2005), and Livyers World(2007). She has published over two hundred pieces in magazines such as Beaver, Inuit Art Quarterly, Parchment, TickleAce, Fiddlehead and Room of One’s Own.

She is an occasional contributer to CBC Radio, has written and narrated three video scripts, had her first play staged in 2002, and is currently the non-fiction columnist for the St. John’s newspaper The Telegram.

Robin was born in Newfoundland and lives in Labrador with her husband, provincial court judge, John Joy. She is a member of The Writers Union of Canada and the Letterset Association of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Reviews
The poets of Atlantic Canada are as pre-eminent today as they were in the days of Alden Nowlan, Milton Acorn, and John Thompson. This vitality is the inspiration for Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. Coastlines showcases half a century of poetry by sixty of the region’s finest poets, beginning with the acknowledged greats: Nowlan, Acorn, and Thompson. Among the diverse voices are Elizabeth Bishop, Douglas Lochhead, Anne Simpson, Al Pittman, and Tammy Armstrong. Powerful poems by 2001 Governor General’s Award winner George Elliott Clarke are included, and works by recent finalists Lynn Davies, Don Domanski, Sue Goyette, and Carole Langille. This astonishing range makes Coastlines an expansive reading pleasure.

“Page after page of… splendid poetry.”
– Quill & Quire

“Wonderful… an enormously valuable resource for readers and teachers of Canadian poetry… A balanced roster of established and emerging poetic voices that reflects both the diversity and the intensity of the region’s poetry… Instructive and exciting… Coastlines is a book that will foster much pleasure and a deeper understanding of Canadian poetry for many years to come.”
– University of Toronto Quarterly

Awards
There are no awards found for this book.

Excerpts & Samples ×
Atlantic Canada is enjoying a renaissance unknown since the days of Alden Nowlan, Milton Acorn, and John Thompson. Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada features work by 60 of the region’s finest poets in a volume that will whet appetites for more. The earlier poetry renaissance began in 1945, with the establishment of The Fiddlehead magazine. In this new volume, the present Fiddlehead editor Ross Leckie, and his collaborators Ann Compton, Laurence Hutchman, and Robin McGrath, showcase the lasting effects of that earlier renaissance and confidently forecast that the newest generation of Atlantic poets will help to make poetry a pre-eminent literary form in Canada once again.

Coastlines provides expansive reading pleasure because of the astonishing range of poetic intelligences it represents and the myriad ways poets find to work and rework the topography of Atlantic culture and landscape. The earliest poems in the anthology were written in the 1950s by the acknowledged greats — Acorn, Nowlan, and Thompson — and by Alfred Bailey, Elizabeth Bishop, and Charles Bruce. The collection also features work by senior poets such as Kay Smith, M. Travis Lane, Fred Cogswell, and Douglas Lochhead, and mid-career poets such as Elisabeth Harvor, Harry Thurston, and John Steffler. Poets of the post-1995 renaissance include Anne Simpson, Sue Sinclair, Michael Crummey, and George Elliott Clarke, who won the 2001 Governor General’s Award; Lynn Davies, Sue Goyette, and Carole Langille have all been recent finalists, and both Brian Bartlett and matt robinson have won the Petra Kenney Memorial International Poetry Prize. The newest voices in Coastlines belong to Tammy Armstrong and Geoff Cook, whose work was selected from manuscripts published in 2002.

Reader Reviews

You must be logged in to submit a review.

Details

Dimensions:

312 Pages
9in * 6in * 0.84in
349gr

Published:

January 01, 2002

Publisher:

Goose Lane Editions

ISBN:

9780864923134

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Canadian

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

Share

No author posts found.

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.

Other books by Robin McGrath

The Illustrated ‘Ode to Labrador’
By (composer): Dr. Harry Paddon
Illustrated by: Geoff Butler
Text by: Robin McGrath

Birchy Maid, The
By (author): Robin McGrath
Illustrated by: Rochelle Baker