Essential Poets Series

George Johnston is one of the most finely tuned poets we have had -- a master watchmaker who can also build Big Ben.

P. K. Page needs no introduction. This is a poet who writes in many genres and on an infinite number of subjects. The source of her poetry is always love – whether in vivid portraits of her inner and outer landscapes; startling insights into the past, the present, the future; illumination of some tiny detail of ordinary life; or admonishments for our neglect of the earth and of each other. Page is an alchemist who turns language into pure gold, a magician who dazzles with sleight of mind. The Essential P. K. Page is perceptive, elegant, romantic (yet never sentimental), sometimes downright funny, wholly conscious.

The Essential Margaret Avison showcases the development of one of Canada’s most brilliant and original poets, twice winner of the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry. Margaret Avison’s vibrant life work is distilled here into a selection that is illuminating, generous and richly varied.

The precision, originality, and playfulness of Robert Gibbs’ poems have captivated readers for over half a century. Mixing the cerebral and the heartfelt, Gibbs’ poems investigate and celebrate family, history, and nature with decisive imagery, idiomatic immediacy, punning wordplay, and breadth of imagination.

Despite his amply deserved reputation as the father of Southwestern Ontario Gothic, James Reaney was one of the most playful and buoyant Canadian poets publishing in the 1940s and ’50s. The Essential James Reaney presents an affordable, pocket-sized selection of the poet’s very best work.

A comprehensive introduction to this enigmatic Canadian poet, The Essential Tom Marshall provides an overview of the breadth of Marshall’s career, from the intense, daring poetry of his youth in the 1960s to the reflective work of his later years.

Don Coles’ Forests of the Medieval World (PQL 1993) won the Governor General’s Award for poetry. Kurgan (PQL 2000) won the Trillum Prize in Ontario. The Essential Don Coles presents an affordable collection of the poet’s very best work.

Though barely remembered today, Kenneth Leslie was one of the most remarkable Canadians of the 20th century. An award-winning poet and an influential political activist in the U.S. during the 1930s and 40s, he lived with a rare, furious passion that found expression in everything from his writings to his turbulent personal life.

The Essential Richard Outram is an elegant, affordable selection of poems by one of Canada’s great poets. By turns theatrical and philosophical – and often both at once – Outram is always intimately attuned to the wonders and the workings of language. This volume gathers well-loved lyrics alongside poems unpublished in Outram’s lifetime: there is much here for both long-time readers of Outram’s work and readers new to his oeuvre.

The Essential Earle Birney presents a wide-ranging selection of the celebrated Canadian poet’s most memorable verse.

The Essential John Reibetanz provides a compelling view of the work of a deeply engaged poet whose exploratory syntax and probing imagery come together to form intense meditations on the nature of community and the transfigurative power of the imagination.

The Essential Anne Wilkinson gives voice to a highly regarded but oft-forgotten poet who introduced a unique female perspective to the Canadian modernist movement.

Brimming with powerful imagery and quiet but strong emotion, The Essential Dorothy Roberts gathers together a selection of the best poems from Fredericton-born poet Dorothy Roberts’ six-decades-long career.

The Essential Douglas LePan presents a wide-ranging collection of poetry—from tense verses on the fog of war to homoerotic love poems to lyrics in praise of the natural world, all in celebration of the heart’s blood ‘that runs through and supports everything mankind has made’.

Thematic consistency and technical inventiveness shine in this selection of Derk Wynand’s emotionally intelligent poetry.

Light and shadows clash in The Essential Kay Smith, a collection that demonstrates an early modernist poet’s attempts to reconcile faith, imagination, reality and being.

A collection of the poetic achievements of John Glassco, a Montreal Group poet whose technical giftedness and unimpeachable wordplay brought music and flair to poems characterized by darkness and decay.

In The Essential Eugene McNamara, poetry pushes the barriers of language and grammar, daring to convey raw emotion with disarming empathy.