The Essential Margaret Avison

This is the sixth volume in The Porcupines Quill's Essential Poets series. The Essential Margaret Avison provides an excellent introduction to this distinguished Canadian poet and the evolution of her work, tracing her movement from skeptical intellectual to committed Christian. Robyn Sarah's selections illustrate Avison's diverse styles and forms, her striking diction, metaphoric and tonal complexities, and unique perspective. Sarah describes how Avison's work became more and more a poetry of inquiry, an inner pondering of her daily givens', in which the poet's experience of the worldly and the transcendent are inextricably tied.

One of Canada's most respected poets, Margaret Avison was born in Ontario in 1918. In a career that began in the 1940s, she produced eight books of poems, the last published posthumously. Her published poetry up to 2002 was gathered in the three-volume Collected Poems, Always Now. Avison was the recipient of many awards, including the Order of Canada, the Griffin Prize for poetry, and three honorary doctorates. She died in 2007.

Robyn Sarah, editor of this volume as well as of The Essential George Johnston and The Essential Don Coles, is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Pause for Breath (2009), and a book of essays on poetry, Little Eurekas. She corresponded with Margaret Avison for the last three years of the poet's life