The Essential Anne Wilkinson gives voice to a highly regarded but oft-forgotten poet who introduced a unique female perspective to the Canadian modernist movement.

Anne Wilkinson (21 September 1910 – 10 May 1961) was one of Canada's few female modernist poets writing during the 1940s and 50s. Born into a wealthy family in Toronto, she grew up there and in London, Ontario, and travelled extensively over the course of her private education. She published her first collection of poetry, Counterpoint to Sleep, in 1951 at the age of 40, followed by her second, The Hangman Ties the Holly, in 1955. Though she considered herself an outsider in Canadian poetry circles, Wilkinson was highly regarded by her peers, and contributed greatly to the Canadian writing community, as a poet, the author of two books of prose, and as a founding editor of The Tamarack Review.

Anne Wilkinson's profile page

Ingrid Ruthig, writer, poet, visual artist, and once-practising architect, is the author of This Being, which won the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best debut collection of poems in Canada (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2016). Her work has appeared widely – most recently in Resisting Canada (Véhicule Press) and Am, Be: The Poetry of Wayne Clifford (Frog Hollow Press). A 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and winner of a Petra Kenney International Poetry Prize, Ruthig is also the author of Slipstream (a poem sequence & artist’s bookwork) and the chapbook of poems Synesthete II, as well as the editor of several volumes, including The Essential Elizabeth Brewster (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2021) and David Helwig: Essays on His Works (Guernica Editions, 2018). She lives near Toronto.

Ingrid Ruthig's profile page

With smartly arranged variety, this is a worthy introduction to Wilkinson's work.

The Essential Anne Wilkinson is an elegant volume featuring Ingrid Ruthig's selections of the Canadian modernist poet's work. Against the odds of gaining notice in a field dominated by men, Wilkinson published two respected poetry collections in her lifetime after age forty. Her work deserves a second look for its coiled energy and biting, elemental imagery.

Ruthig gathers signature poems from Counterpoint to Sleep, The Hangman Ties the Holly, and Wilkinson's manuscripts. The poems span from 1945 to 1961, and subjects include lakeside settings, thoughts on reading Kafka, family, suburbia, the act of writing, and motherhood. Wilkinson enlivens everyday concerns with original perspectives. A talent for strong sounds, apt rhymes, and well-earned conclusions links these poems together.

The choice to meld features of the human body with nature especially resonates. Lines such as "I was a poet then. Boldly I carried my light / Through all the pressure of black water. / My blood was cold with fire for I swam / In the glimmer of a self-ignited lantern" unfold in crisp, controlled scenes that depict powerful emotions.

Other moments expertly braid internal states, such as loss, with external wildness: "My heart is boughed by the cedar / That covers with green limbs the bones of my children." In different poems, a "twig is a nerve," lovers "peel the skin of summer / With their teeth," a speaker finds rosemary to "stitch the leaves / To green hearts on my sleeve; / My new green arteries // Fly streamers [...]." Even when hard realizations define her speakers' experiences, the poet continually maps the physical world with an attentiveness that suggests prayer. The result is an arresting look at one poet's consistent vision.

Another intriguing aspect of the poems is the dark sensibility that manifests throughout. The portrayal of womanhood in terms of mystery and the forbidden recurs: "I was witch and I could be / Bird or leaf / Or branch and bark of tree." In "Untitled," "full moons froth with my / And witches' milk." Sometimes dangerous invitations seep into unexpected poems. In "Lullaby," a gentle opening transforms when the speaker asks, "But if I smother, / Breathe a feather / As a shroud?" Time and time again the poet creates a series of provocative masks; speakers shift almost imperceptibly, their voices confident.

The impression the book leaves is one of painstaking craft. Though a few phrasings turn precious, the majority of the lines remain sharp. With smartly arranged variety, this is a worthy introduction to Wilkinson's work, and a useful addition to collections on women's studies as well as modernism.

Foreword Reviews

'Beautifully contextualized and lovingly presented, this collection of twenty-five poems is a most pleasing way to experience the work of Anne Wilkinson. The carefully selected poems are nerve-like and do indeed very often set the heart to pounding.... One of the measures of success for any selected or 'essential' anthology, must be whether the collection has stirred a desire in the reader to seek out more of the work, and this one most certainly does.'

Canadian Poetries

'The strength of the collection is ... in the interplay between its intimate voice and its careful technique, and it rewards a reading that it attentive to both these elements as well. It is a strong addition to the Essential Poets Series and should serve to raise the profile of a Canadian poet who is still too often neglected.'

Jeremy Luke Hill