25th Trillium Award

Poetry Post: The Urge Reviews James Pollock

 
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You Are Here, by James Pollock

After a brief hiatus, The Urge reviewer, Stewart Cole, writes a detailed review of James Pollock’s You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2012) in combination with Pollock’s first poetry collection, the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize-nominated book, Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse, 2012). Detailing some of the major arguments made in You Are Here, such as that a nationalistic ideology means that we aren’t affected by a global poetic influence and that a lot of mediocre work is celebrated in Canada for reasons that don’t include literary merit, Stewart suggests that the book provides “unusually nuanced and intelligent takes on individual poets and volumes” and that whether Pollock’s arguments leave readers angry or in agreement, they will find something of value in this book. Stewart reviews Sailing to Babylon in conjunction with You Are Here so “we can see what kind of poetry results from his own combination of extraordinary critical cuity and thoroughgoing verbal mastery, tempered by a discomfiting ideological blindness.”

Read the full blog post here.

Also check out Open Book’s Poets in Profile interview with Stewart Cole and On Writing interview with James Pollock.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, Open Book: Ontario will be posting a Poetry Post each week day. Do you have a poetry-related link that you think we should know about? Please send it to [email protected]

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