Eugene McNamara's poetry ponders the textures and contradictions of his adopted city: Windsor, Ontario. Most comfortable in small, non-eloquent, delinquent, unpopular and wayward places, McNamara's poems display abiding empathy with the inhabitants of these locales, conveying raw emotion through deceptively simple lines in which 'voices cry wait / we didn't want this / and the wind slams the words / around the corners of the empty / buildings down the empty / streets.' The result is a selection offering poems of humility and grace that empathize rather than intellectualize.

The Essential Poets Series presents the works of Canada's most celebrated poets in a package that is beautiful, accessible and affordable. The Essential Eugene McNamara is the twenty-fourth volume in this increasingly popular series.

Eugene McNamara is a profound voice in Canadian Literature. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois and immigrated to Canada in 1959. McNamara attended Northwestern University where he received his Ph.D. He taught American literature and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He was the founder and Editor in Chief of University of Windsor’s Windsor Review from 1965 to 1987. He and his wife, Margaret, live in Windsor, Ontario. His stories and poems have been in Best Canadian Stories, Best American Short Stories, Ontario Review, Saturday Night, Malahat Review and Queens Quarterly. He has given frequent readings of his work in Canada, the US and England.

Eugene McNamara's profile page

Phil Hall’s first small book, Eighteen Poems, was published by Cyanamid, the Canadian mining company, in Mexico City, in 1973. Among his many titles are: Old Enemy Juice (1988), The Unsaid (1992), and Hearthedral – A Folk-Hermetic (1996). In the early 80s, Phil was a member of the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union, & also a member of the Vancouver Men Against Rape Collective. He has taught writing at York University, Ryerson University, Seneca College, George Brown College, and is currently the Writer in Residence at Queen's University. He has been poet-in-residence at Sage Hill Writing Experience (Sask.), The Pierre Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon), & elsewhere. In 2007, BookThug published Phil’s long poem, White Porcupine. Also in 2007. he and his wife, Ann, walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and lives near Perth, Ontario. Recent books include An Oak Hunch and The Little Seamstress. In 2011, he won Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Poetry for his most recent collection, Killdeer, a work the jury called “a masterly modulation of the elegiac through poetic time.” Killdeer was also nominated for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize, and won the 2012 Trillium Book Prize.

Phil Hall's profile page