Beginnings The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a
European audience. One of the first works was
Robert Hayman's
Quodlibets, composed in
Newfoundland and published in 1628. With the growth of English language communities near the end of the 18th century, poetry aimed at local readers began to appear in local newspapers. These writings were mainly intended to reflect the prevailing cultural values of the time and were modeled after
English poetry of the same period.
Oliver Goldsmith's long poem
The Rising Village appeared in 1825. It was a response to
The Deserted Village by his namesake and great-uncle
Oliver Goldsmith. In the first half of the 19th century, poetic works began to reflect local subjects.
Acadia by
Joseph Howe and
The Saint Lawrence and the Saguenay by
Charles Sangster are examples of this trend. Early nationalistic verses were composed by writers including
Thomas D'Arcy McGee. Many "regional" poets also espoused the British political and aesthetic
jingoism of the period. For example, High Tory loyalist & occasional poet Thomas H. Higginson of Vankleek Hill, Ontario, produced
paeans to Sir
Francis Bond Head (Wm. Lyon Mackenzie's opponent) and the British war effort in the
Crimea (such as
Sonnet to Florence Nightingale and others), while producing some interesting nature verse exemplifying the all-pervasive influence of
Wordsworth's view of nature and the sublime. In 1857,
Charles Heavysege attracted international (British and American) attention for his verse drama
Mari na de Saul.
Confederation The first book of poetry published in Canada following the formation of the new Dominion of
Canada in 1867 was
Dreamland by
Charles Mair (1868). A group of poets now known as the "
Confederation Poets", including
Charles G. D. Roberts,
Archibald Lampman,
Bliss Carman,
Duncan Campbell Scott, and
William Wilfred Campbell, came to prominence in the 1880s and 1890s. Choosing the world of nature as their inspiration, their work was drawn from their own experiences and, at its best, written in their own tones.
Isabella Valancy Crawford,
Frederick George Scott,
Francis Sherman, and
Annie Campbell Huestis are also sometimes associated with this group. During this period,
E. Pauline Johnson and
William Henry Drummond were writing popular poetry - Johnson's based on her part-
Mohawk heritage, and Drummond, the Poet of the Habitant, writing dialect verse.
Early 20th century In 1907
Robert W. Service's
Songs of a Sourdough,
Kipling-type verse about the
Klondike Gold Rush, became enormously popular: the book would go on to sell more than three million copies in the 20th century. His success would be inspired many other poets, such as
Tom MacInnes.
Marjorie Pickthall received much critical attention in this period. In 1915,
John McCrae, serving as a surgeon in the Canadian Army, wrote the famous war poem "
In Flanders Fields". After the war, in Newfoundland,
E. J. Pratt described the struggle to make a living from the sea in poems about maritime life and the history of Canada; while in central Canada, poets such as
Ralph Gustafson and
Raymond Knister were moving away from traditional verse forms. During the 1920s and 1930s, the
Montreal Group (a circle of young poets which included
A.J.M. Smith,
A.M. Klein, and
F. R. Scott) helped inspire the development of
modernist poetry in
Montreal through the
McGill Fortnightly Review and the 1936 anthology
New Provinces. The "new poetry" valued intellect over sentimentality, or as some have put it, logic over human emotions. Under the literary editorship of
Earle Birney, the
Canadian Forum helped promote similar developments in
Toronto.
Dorothy Livesay, born in
Manitoba, was an important contributor to the Toronto movement. The Maritimes remained a holdout for traditional verse.
The Song Fishermen of Halifax were a magnet for new poetic talent in the late 1920s due to having Bliss Carman and Charles G.D. Roberts as members. The most notable of the new poets were the sonneteers
Kenneth Leslie and Robert Norwood. The
Canadian Poetry Magazine was founded by
Pelham Edgar of the
Canadian Authors Association in 1936. Traditional verse was what sold in Canada all through this period; and it was what
Canadian Poetry Magazine emphasized.
Wilson MacDonald was a top selling Canadian poet of the time.
Post-war Following
World War II, a new breed of poets appeared, writing for a well-educated audience. These included
James Reaney,
Jay Macpherson and
Leonard Cohen. Meanwhile, some maturing authors such as
Irving Layton,
Raymond Souster, and
Louis Dudek, moved in a different direction, adopting
colloquial speech in their work. In the 1960s, a renewed
sense of nation helped foster new voices:
Margaret Atwood,
Michael Ondaatje,
Leonard Cohen,
Alden Nowlan Eli Mandel and
Margaret Avison. Others such as
Al Purdy,
Milton Acorn, and
Earle Birney, already published, produced some of their best work during this period. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw greater experimentation from poets such as
bpNichol,
Lionel Kearns,
David UU,
Joe Rosenblatt,
Steve McCaffery,
Judith Copithorne and
bill bissett. The
TISH Poetry movement in Vancouver brought about poetic innovation from
Jamie Reid,
George Bowering,
Fred Wah,
Frank Davey,
Daphne Marlatt, and
David Cull. Since the 1990s, several
Governor General's Award-winning poets, in particular
Jan Zwicky and
Tim Lilburn, have been engaged in nonfiction writing that maps the relationships between poetry and philosophy. Zwicky's "Lyric Philosophy" and "Wisdom and Metaphor", as well as Lilburn's collection "Thinking and Singing", are representative works. A younger generation of Canadian poets has been expanding the boundaries of originality:
Brian Brett,
Ken Babstock,
Karen Solie,
Lynn Crosbie,
Patrick Lane,
Stuart Ross,
Sonnet L'Abbé,
George Elliott Clarke and
Barry Dempster have all imprinted their unique consciousnesses onto the map of Canadian imagery. A notable anthology of Canadian poetry is
The New Oxford book of Canadian Verse, edited by Margaret Atwood ().
Literary prizes Notable literary prizes for English Canadian poetry include the
Governor General's Awards, the
Griffin Poetry Prize, the
Gerald Lampert Award, and the
Pat Lowther Award.
Uniquely Canadian forms Jackpine Sonnet The
Jackpine Sonnet is a form devised by
Milton Acorn, designed to be as irregular and spikey (and Canadian) as a
jack pine tree, but with internal structure and integrity. Of no fixed length and with erratic line lengths, the
Jackpine Sonnet depends on interweaving
internal rhymes,
assonance and occasional end-
rhymes.
Mirelle Tom MacInnes reportedly invented "a five-line stanza of his own he called the 'mirelle'."
Viator The
Viator poem form was invented by British author and poet
Robin Skelton. It consists of any stanzaic form in which the first line of the first stanza is the second line of the second stanza and so on until the poem ends with the line with which it began. The term,
Viator comes from the Latin for
traveller. An example of Skelton's form may be found in his reference book,
The Shapes of our Singing, and is entitled
Dover Beach Revisited. ==French-Canadian poetry==