One of Canada's most revered poets and essayists, Tim Lilburn has long been a deep thinker on issues of ecology and writing. In Going Home, Lilburn addresses how North Americans relate (often uneasily) to our physical landscape: we subjugated the land and as a result have failed to settle fully into this place. Retrieving an almost lost strand in the Western intellectual tradition - the erotic, contemplative strand - Lilburn traces a history of eros and desire in the hope that this exercise and its awakening can lead us home. The collection finishes with two unforgettable personal essays in which Lilburn writes about the place where his ancestors are buried, the flatlands and coulees of southern Saskatchewan.
The suggestion is here that soul-making is the true vocation of the poet. Poetry is personal speech on universal experience, and in this selection of poems the individual approach to the sacred is emphasized over any adherence to orthodoxy or doctrine. In this anthology, spiritual traditions of East and West are filtered through the personal vision of sixteen contemporary Canadian poets. These poets are joined together not by faith and similar belief, but in each following their own path to truth. Their poems and stories and editor Sussan McCaslin's insightful introduction illuminated fundamental themes of spiritual life that resonated in each of us.
The present volume contains papers and poems presented at Saarland University's international conference "A World of Local Voices: Poetry in English Today" (October 22-23, 1999), and the "Day of International Poetry" (October 24, 1999), both organised by the university's Department of North American Literature and Culture. The conference set out to explore how the modernist tendency towards overarching concepts and a "poetry of ideas" is slowly being superseded by a more modest "poetry of place", which at the same time seems to be loosely subsumed within the unifying medium of English in its various forms. The "Day of International Poetry" was meant to put into operation some of the poetic issues discussed during the conference by asking poets from several English-speaking countries (Canada, India, Jamaica, and the USA) to contribute their individual voices to an international reading of poetry. This volume comprises critical contributions which deal with the interplay of aesthetic, cultural, and political forces in comtemporary poetry. The common reference of this collection is poetry written in varieties of the English language, including translations. The essays show awareness of the current critical debates concerning postcolonialism and intercultural literary relations while also suggesting new paradigms of critical understanding, based on the analyses of individual poetic expression. As a supplement, selected poets and translators have submitted individual poetic texts with accompanying commentaries
A new collection by the winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Tim Lilburn’s award-winning work has observed the natural world with an intensity of seeing and a reverence that shifts the way we understand our lives. Now, in his brilliant new collection of poems, Lilburn has turned his meticulous, unerring eye to an intimate, utterly compelling exploration of the body’s fall into illness. These haunting poems take the reader below the surface of things into a peculiar world of personal and social alteration. Its incantatory insistence and its shocking imagistic leaps make the poetry a sustained act of therapy, a ritual instrument for change.
The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature provides a broad-ranging introduction to some of the key critical fields, genres, and periods in Canadian literary studies. The essays in this volume, written by prominent theorists in the field, reflect the plurality of critical perspectives, regional and historical specializations, and theoretical positions that constitute the field of Canadian literary criticism across a range of genres and historical periods. The volume provides a dynamic introduction to current areas of critical interest, including (1) attention to the links between the literary and the public sphere, encompassing such topics as neoliberalism, trauma and memory, citizenship, material culture, literary prizes, disability studies, literature and history, digital cultures, globalization studies, and environmentalism or ecocriticism; (2) interest in Indigenous literatures and settler-Indigenous relations; (3) attention to multiple diasporic and postcolonial contexts within Canada; (4) interest in the institutionalization of Canadian literature as a discipline; (5) a turn towards book history and literary history, with a renewed interest in early Canadian literature; (6) a growing interest in articulating the affective character of the "literary" - including an interest in affect theory, mourning, melancholy, haunting, memory, and autobiography. The book represents a diverse array of interests -- from the revival of early Canadian writing, to the continued interest in Indigenous, regional, and diasporic traditions, to more recent discussions of globalization, market forces, and neoliberalism. It includes a distinct section dedicated to Indigenous literatures and traditions, as well as a section that reflects on the discipline of Canadian literature as a whole.
From Governor General's Award-winning poet Tim Lilburn comes a new collection of poetry of great scope and ambition. The Names is personal and familial archaeology, an extemporal dig giving spectres back to their bodies. With its lines sped up and dazzlingly associative, Tim Lilburn’s cocktail of obsessions – confession, ontology, mystical theology, humour and extreme, fleet, apt weirdness – marches through on full display. He pulls in an even broader cast of characters than his previous collections managed: John Ruusbroec and Marguerite Porete brush past aunts, uncles, and unusual creatures steering the boats of language past fog-draped trees. In Lilburn’s latest collection, we are immersed in a realism of remarkable proportions, as though incandescent memory comprised both texture and text, and combined formed the elemental fibres of a perilous present.
Writing in Dust is the first sustained study of prairie Canadian literature from an ecocritical perspective. Drawing on recent scholarship in environmental theory and criticism, Jenny Kerber considers the ways in which prairie writers have negotiated processes of ecological and cultural change in the region from the early twentieth century to the present. The book begins by proposing that current environmental problems in the prairie region can be understood by examining the longstanding tendency to describe its diverse terrain in dualistic terms—either as an idyllic natural space or as an irredeemable wasteland. It inquires into the sources of stories that naturalize ecological prosperity and hardship and investigates how such narratives have been deployed from the period of colonial settlement to the present. It then considers the ways in which works by both canonical and more recent writers ranging from Robert Stead, W.O. Mitchell, and Margaret Laurence to Tim Lilburn, Louise Halfe, and Thomas King consistently challenge these dualistic landscape myths, proposing alternatives for the development of more ecologically just and sustainable relationships among people and between humans and their physical environments. Writing in Dust asserts that “reading environmentally” can help us to better understand a host of issues facing prairie inhabitants today, including the environmental impacts of industrial agriculture, resource extraction, climate change, shifting urban–rural demographics, the significance of Indigenous understandings of human–nature relationships, and the complex, often contradictory meanings of eco-cultural metaphors of alien/invasiveness, hybridity, and wildness.
Progressions presents another batch of erudite and entertainingessays on a variety of topics covering Saskatchewan’s literarydevelopment, as well as tributes to some of the major con-tributors to that history, and a pictorial glimpse into the past.Writers stopped using typewriters, and even moved beyond theKaypro computer box for their compositions. The SaskatchewanSchool of the Arts was shut down, ending the Fort San writingexperience. But the Sage Hill Writing Experience quickly rose toreplace it. Saskatchewan literary presses really found their feet andpublished important and lasting books. A wave of new writersjoined the founders of the province’s literary tradition. Respondingto this growth in the community, the Saskatchewan Book Awards,and the Saskatchewan Festival of Words in Moose Jaw came intobeing. The Saskatchewan writing community stormed out of the20th Century in a frenzy of creativity and accomplishment.Essay contributors to Volume 2 include Dave Margoshes, JeanetteLynes, Aritha Van Herk, Alison Calder and seven more. The elevenessays include such topics as “To House or House Not: The NewSaskatchewan Women Poets”, “Contemporary Nature Writing inSaskatchewan”, “Fort San/Sage Hill” and “Brave and FoolishNonconformists”. In addition, literary tributes are offered for:Caroline Heath, Pat Krause, Martha Blum and Max Braithwaite.
"This is an exceptionally forceful collection, substantial, evocative and enduring, much like the region of Canada the writers are addressing." -Saskatoon Star PhoenixContributors include Rudy Wiebe, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Karen Connelly, Sharon Butala, and others.
