Poetry
Elizabeth Bishop The Complete Poems (Chatto &
Windus/Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Though American by birth,
Bishop spent much of her youth in Nova Scotia. Many of her early
poems feed off her Canadian childhood and her fascination with the
country's rough landscapes.
Leonard Cohen Poems: 1956-1968 (Cape/Penguin,
o/p). A fine collection from a Sixties survivor who enjoyed high
critical acclaim as a poet before emerging as a husky-throated
crooner of bedsit ballads. See also his Beautiful Losers ,
one of the most aggressively experimental Canadian novels of the
Sixties (Black Spring Press/Vintage).
New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse (ed. Margaret Atwood;
OUP). Canadian poets are increasingly finding a distinctive voice,
but few except this collection's editor have made much impact
outside their native country. Atwood's own sharp, witty
examinations of nationality and gender are among the best in this
anthology - more of her verse is published in the UK by Virago.
Robert Service The Best of Robert Service
(A&C Black/Running Press). Service's Victorian ballads of
pioneer and gold-rush life have a certain charm and they capture
the essence of the gold-rush period amongst which the Songs of a
Sourdough collection of 1907 is perhaps the most memorable.
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