Interviews with ten Great Canadian poets.

In The Writers' Words Volume 2 is a collection of interviews of ten significant contemporary Canadian poets: Brian Bartlett, Roo Borson, George Elliott Clarke, Travis Lane, John B. Lee, Daniel Lockhart, Bruce Meyer, A.F. Moritz, Sue Sinclair, and Colleen Thibaudeau.

In this book, the writers speak in-depth about the importance of personal events in their lives, their aesthetics, the social and geographical contexts, historical background, the influence of other writers and the evolution of their poetry during their careers. These poets give a larger sense of the nature and the development of contemporary Canadian poetry.

Laurence Hutchman was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Toronto. He received his PhD from the Université de Montreal and has taught at a number of universities. For twenty-three years he was a professor of English literature at the Université de Moncton at the Edmundston Campus. Hutchman has published 13 books of poetry, including Foreign National, Beyond Borders, Reading the Water, Personal Encounters, Two Maps of Emery, The House of Shifting Time, Fire and Water (in collaboration with Eva Kolacz) and Swimming Toward Sun Collected Poems: 1968-2020. He has also co-edited the anthology Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada and edited In the Writers’ Words.

His poetry has received many grants and awards, including the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence and has been translated into numerous languages. In 2017 he was named poet laureate of Emery, north Toronto. He lives with his wife, the artist and poet, Eva Kolacz in Oakville, Ontario.

Laurence Hutchman's profile page

The interviews in Laurence Hutchman’s In the Writers’ Words are an invaluable look into the life and work of several excellent Canadian poets. The second volume brings us closer to the minds of some of our major contemporary poets including A. F. Moritz, Sue Sinclair, George Elliott Clarke, and M. Travis Lane, among others. Worthy of study and posterity, these interviews are a service to readers of poetry everywhere and a vital contribution to Canadian letters.

Paul Vermeersch