sewn paper
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Poetry; POE 011000
November 2004
280 pages
ISBN 0-88984-255-8
$19.95
Always Now (Volume Two)
Margaret Avison
Margaret Avison has created poems which are regarded as
`among the finest religious poems written in the 20th century' (David Stouck,
Major Canadian Authors).
In the words of editor Stan Dragland, the collected works `contain
definitively all the poems up to 2002 that Margaret Avison wishes to preserve'.
Always Now has been named as one of thirteen `must-read' English-Canadian
poetry books by the League of Canadian Poets.
`Elements of play and whole-hearted response to the natural world for me
remained a constant thread throughout. In time the mood tilted towards
a conviction that an ultimate purpose prevailed, and is good. Working
out the theological implications of that faith conviction made
the final quarter of No Time more memoir than poetry, I suspect.' Always Now: Collected Poems of Margaret Avison, encompasses in
three volumes all of the published books, from Winter Sun (1960)
to Concrete and Wild Carrot (2002), and is framed by a gathering
of uncollected and new poems respectively. When complete, Always
Now will present all of the poems, up to 2002, that Margaret
Avison wishes to preserve. sunblue and No Time,
the two books collected here, are growth rings; the poems are rings
within rings of reflection on the creation and the Creator. In these
poems, Margaret Avison's faith, now constant, is dynamic, challenging
her as well as her reader (`from the namby-pams / of the cloaking
faith I wear / deliver me').
`From the serene, leaf-fringed branch on its cover, Always Now may not
seem like a book that provides a seismic shock to expectations. But the
surprise of reading Margaret Avison's poetry is, in large part,
predicated on the extent to which we have underestimated it. Awarding
her poems with canonical respectability has allowed us to tune out
everything that is disquieting about them.
`Today, those untapped revolutionary properties wait like the insides of
a shaken bottle of bubbly. So while you may appreciate her as the
doyenne of our poetic past, Margaret Avison, at the age of 96,
represents nothing less than the future of Canadian poetry: a future
sympathetic to originality and the quirks of the individual imagination;
a future sympathetic to intellect and vocabulary's rich vocal palette.'
-- from Margaret Avison's foreword to Always Now, Volume One.
-- Carmine Starnino, the Globe & Mail, 19 Feb 05
`It is also hard to contest Avison's ability to find great
poems while searching through the demands of everyday life. [...] Margaret
Avison rules now -- and always.'
-- James Reaney, the London Free Press
`However long it may take for their work to gain recognition,
Canadian poets seem to be doing land office business these days.
The signs keep coming in over the wires. The Griffin Prize for Poetry,
both more generous and more responsible than any comparable award in America,
has started to generate real excitement. Avison's contemporary P.K. Page has just
published an impressive selection of her poems. Then there are those,
like Michael Ondatjee and Anne Carson, who are already widely read
outside of Canada. You also have southern transplants, poets like Robert Bringhurst
and A.F. Moritz, whose strong recent work deserves attention. But the best
writing has never followed trends, and whatever momentum Canadian poetry
may have right now, the real significance lies in the solitary pleasure
of reading the verse itself. With her technical deftness, her ethical commitment,
and her meditative intensity, Margaret Avison offers as deep a pleasure
as any poet now writing. Recognition will surely gather around this work.
But serious readers don't have to wait for the anthologists.'
-- Peter Campion
`These are poems steeped in the Bible, but always imbued with genuine emotion and insight into contemporary life and without a tinge of self-righteousness.'
-- Bert Almon, Canadian Book Review Annual
`Margaret Avison is the best poet we have had.... ``Searching
and Sounding'' and the poem that rimes with it, ``The Dumbfounding,''
are not likely to be bettered by any work that any poet will ever
publish.'
- Poet Laureate George Bowering
`[Avison] is both abstract and concrete; she combines
metaphysical speculation with acute observation; she sees things
in their everyday detail and also in the context of eternity. She
works at and teases the language, like a tangled skein of wool,
to render these paradoxes in all the complexity of their
ramifications.'
- Stephen Scobie
`It is Avison's unique accomplishment to write, in and for a secular
world, about faith and God, with intelligence and without becoming
either sentimental or preachy. Her faith is foundational to her
writing. In speaking about the forces that shaped her earlier
writing, she relates how she resisted commitment to Christianity
because she feared it would mean an end to writing poetry. As it
turned out, "new surges of vitality came with new Christian faith,
and poetry lost its status as my first priority" '
-- Sarah Klassen, Prairie Fire
`Margaret Avison is a national treasure. For many decades she has
forged a way to write, against the grain, some of the most humane,
sweet and profound poetry of our time.'
- Griffin Poetry Prize (Judges' Citation)
Photo by Joan Eichner
Avison's subsequent poetry collections explore spiritual discovery in a form reminiscent of the 17th century metaphysical poets. Avison combines a sense of social concern with moral and religious values in her work. She has been awarded three honorary doctorates, and has been named an Officer of the Order of Canada. Her collection No Time won a Governor General's Award in 1989, and Concrete and Wild Carrot won the Griffin Prize in 2003.