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Poetry; POE 011000
February 2005
232 pages
ISBN 0-88984-261-2
$19.95
Always Now (Volume Three)
Margaret Avison
Since childhood Margaret Avison has written poetry and published it. Always
Now: The Collected Poems (three volumes), stretches from the 1930s to
the twenty-first century, through Winter Sun in 1960 and Concrete
and Wild Carrot in 2002 (winners, respectively, of the
Governor-General's Award and the Griffin Prize for Poetry) to
nineteen new poems selected for inclusion here.
`How can we catch the illimitable in our little bottles?' Margaret
Avison has written in A Kind of Perseverance. `Yet,'
she continues, `we must learn precision with particulars as
well as spacious thinking across centuries. In practical terms we
keep building connections between these extremes.' She was not
thinking of her own poems, writing that, but her devoted readers
will. No contemporary poet enlarges her readers more with less
sacrifice of precise grounding in the fascinating and troubling here
and now.
`[t]... how is an unbeliever to approach not just parts of the work but all of
the work of a poet who believes, through and through, in a personal
God? ... I listen to her infinite sympathy for the natural
world, her sensitivity to the physical weather of the soul, her
razor-sharp eyes which move like a hawk's and a sighted mole's,
her wry debates with herself, her ornery, unfashionable courage, her
poetic genius for placing words in such a way that I feel as if I'm
meeting them for the first time.' `The language of these poems is lively and energetic, her observations searching,
as if she is ever on the lookout for new insights as she contemplates the city's
streets and parks, and the changing seasons.... Even with an impressive body of work behind her,
Margaret Avison's mind is on new beginnings.' `The project represents a lifetime's work, completed by a woman for whom paying attention
has become a habit of being. The bright or dingy corners of a city, nature in its
infinite variety, human experience of all kinds, and Divine activity have
all engaged her keen eye and lively mind. Her thorough scrutinies
are informed by knowledge of history, western literature and science,
and illumined by faith.' `Margaret Avison writes about the unknowable in all its forms. In her poetry,
weather is a portent, a visible sign of the invisible, evidence of God made
flesh. Our lives, she suggests, are held by the weather, penetrated by ``precious
terrible coldness'' and enlarged by looking upward. When ``the soul's gates''
unseal, snow turns into ``asters of tumbled quietness''.' `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.' `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.' `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.'
-- Elizabeth Hay
-- Barbara Carey, the Toronto Star
-- Sarah Klassen, the Prairie Fire Review of Books
-- Elizabeth Hay, the Globe and Mail
-- James Reaney, the London Free Press
- Poet Laureate George Bowering
- 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.