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Canadian literary criticism.) What has remained is a dominant poetry establishment that has congratulated itself on shutting in on itself. Other similar nations’ poets have managed to work through this (think Seamus Heaney, Les Murray, Derek Walcott), presenting an identity that is both local and international, unique and yet interconnected, but Canada has no national poet who is also internationally renowned. At the same time, for those poets who have aimed to work beyond Canada’s national limits, there has been little return. Michael Schmidt, in his voluminous study Lives of the Poets (1998), described Canadian poetry as a ‘short street’. This short shrift made an impression on many emerging and younger Canadian poets and critics, who read it as a challenge, and noted that Canadian poetry had failed to make an impact on what should have been its ideal readership in Britain. Schmidt did include mention of two Canadian poets, Norm Sibum and Marius Kociejowski (both are included here), who remain lesser-known figures in Canada. There is a sense in this that even when Canadian poets are noteworthy to an international audience, something stands between their work and critical acceptance in Canada. This is linked often as not to the complex identity of the poets: Sibum is a German-American who emigrated to Canada in the 1960s, while Kociejowski is a PolishCanadian who has lived in London since the early 1970s. Both are wanderers between cultures, rather than mainstays; both are connected to Canada and yet separate from it. There is a long-standing Canadian cultural myth that to be a Canadian poet is to be part of the country’s geography, whereas elsewhere to be a poet is to be part of poetry’s history. Further, if the poet is of a ‘hyphenated’ identity, there is a presumption that the Canadian is the most important aspect. Both Sibum and Kociejowski, as well as many others with connections to larger literatures and traditions that look beyond Canada, are sidelined within the discussion of Canadian poetry, because they look and reach outward. Because they are Canadian, and hence seen as part of an inward-looking tradition in terms of national, if not poetic, identity, they remain undervalued elsewhere. Of the Canadian poets whose international reputations do exist, the most significant at this time is Anne Carson – of whom Andrew Motion could write in a Guardian review as recently as xiv Modern Canadian Poets
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July 2010 that ‘her British readership is much smaller than it should be’; a true if remarkable conclusion, given that Carson is the only Canadian poet to have won the prominent British T.S. Eliot Prize. Carson, like Sibum and Kociejowski, faced an initial difficulty in the rapprochement between her international achievement and Canadian literature: her great success and acceptance in the United States was countered by her being overlooked for years in Canadian literary circles. Many others, including Daryl Hine, Eric Ormsby, and A.F. Moritz have suffered similarly. Hine was virtually ignored in Canadian poetry and criticism for over twenty years, and was last anthologised in The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English (1984), edited by Margaret Atwood. Atwood focused Hine’s entry on poems he had written and published while living in Canada, ignoring his larger oeuvre – much of which was written while he lived in the United States. This limiting of Hine’s poetry suggests the critical devaluation of the work of Canada’s diaspora. Canadian readers and critics have little contact with diaspora poets, and diaspora poets find it difficult to gain critical recognition within Canada. Here, as elsewhere, Canadian nationalism has resulted in Canadian culture becoming isolated from the rest of the world. Poetry anthologies are the space in which the various poetic and national trends of thought are revealed. Ralph Gustafson’s Penguin Book Of Canadian Verse (1958) was an introduction for British readers of the 1950s to Alfred Bailey and John Glassco, among others. The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse: In French and English (1960), edited by A.J.M. Smith, was influential and inclusive, and is to date the most important study, bringing in francophone figures such as Anne Hébert and Hector de SaintDenys Garneau alongside English-language poets like Page, Jay Macpherson, and Hine. Later, Gary Geddes helped to shape one version of ‘CanLit’ in the 1970s and beyond with his popular anthologies 15 Canadian Poets (1971), 15 Canadian Poets Plus 5 (1977), 15 Canadian Poets x 2 (1988), and 15 Canadian Poets x 3 (2001). Geddes anthologised work that centralised the plainspoken Everyman figure who has become commonplace in Canadian poetry and criticism. Following on from this came Margaret Atwood’s updated 1984 Oxford anthology, in which Introduction xv

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Canadian literary criticism.) What has remained is a dominant poetry establishment that has congratulated itself on shutting in on itself. Other similar nations’ poets have managed to work through this (think Seamus Heaney, Les Murray, Derek Walcott), presenting an identity that is both local and international, unique and yet interconnected, but Canada has no national poet who is also internationally renowned.

At the same time, for those poets who have aimed to work beyond Canada’s national limits, there has been little return. Michael Schmidt, in his voluminous study Lives of the Poets (1998), described Canadian poetry as a ‘short street’. This short shrift made an impression on many emerging and younger Canadian poets and critics, who read it as a challenge, and noted that Canadian poetry had failed to make an impact on what should have been its ideal readership in Britain.

Schmidt did include mention of two Canadian poets, Norm Sibum and Marius Kociejowski (both are included here), who remain lesser-known figures in Canada. There is a sense in this that even when Canadian poets are noteworthy to an international audience, something stands between their work and critical acceptance in Canada. This is linked often as not to the complex identity of the poets: Sibum is a German-American who emigrated to Canada in the 1960s, while Kociejowski is a PolishCanadian who has lived in London since the early 1970s. Both are wanderers between cultures, rather than mainstays; both are connected to Canada and yet separate from it.

There is a long-standing Canadian cultural myth that to be a Canadian poet is to be part of the country’s geography, whereas elsewhere to be a poet is to be part of poetry’s history. Further, if the poet is of a ‘hyphenated’ identity, there is a presumption that the Canadian is the most important aspect. Both Sibum and Kociejowski, as well as many others with connections to larger literatures and traditions that look beyond Canada, are sidelined within the discussion of Canadian poetry, because they look and reach outward. Because they are Canadian, and hence seen as part of an inward-looking tradition in terms of national, if not poetic, identity, they remain undervalued elsewhere.

Of the Canadian poets whose international reputations do exist, the most significant at this time is Anne Carson – of whom Andrew Motion could write in a Guardian review as recently as xiv

Modern Canadian Poets

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