Modern Canadian Poets

Cosmopolitan, hybrid and eloquent, modern Canadian poetry is still, for many readers outside Canada, one of the great undiscovered terrains of world literature. Modern Canadian Poets sets out to end that neglect, redefining the connections between Canada and the international poetry world. From poets born in the early years of the twentieth century to those writing in the twenty-first, Modern Canadian Poets explores a lineage of modernist, multilingual, culturally pluralist writers who have engaged with other English- and French-speaking traditions in new ways, to make a literature that is unmistakably Canadian and international. The thirty-five poets included represent a wide spectrum of Canadian poetry of the last hundred years in its variety of styles and traditions. Among them are French Canadian poets in translations by anglophone writers, and poets from the First Nations, Caribbean-Canadian and Africadian communities. From their vantage point as Canadian poets living outside Canada, Evan Jones and Todd Swift draw a new map of this unique literary landscape.