A collection of essays, reviews, personal reflections and interviews that offer a welcoming and insightful tour of contemporary Canadian poetry, as well as cultural studies on topics ranging from clothespins to eulogies. Anita Lahey, former editor of Arc Poetry Magazine, Canada's most distinguished and lively poetry journal, brings together here her thought-provoking Arc essays with appreciations and reviews of a who's who of Canadian women poets, including the exquisite (and rebellious!) formalist Diana Brebner, “miniaturist” M. Travis Lane, grand dame P.K. Page, the long-neglected Dorothy Roberts, and Gwendolyn MacEwen, whose dramatic life and death unfortunately persist in overshadowing the legacy of her work. She writes on her Polish-immigrant grandmother and on growing up as the daughter of a cash register repairman, and engages in probing discussions with eminent Canadian authors Stephanie Bolster, John Barton, Joan Thomas and Alice Munro.

Anita Lahey's poems have appeared in the Malahat Review, the Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, This Magazine, in Ottawa buses as part of the Transpoetry competition, and in The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry. She has won the Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest, Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem, and first prize for poetry in Pagitica's annual literary competition. Lahey is the editor of Arc: Canada's Poetry Magazine and lives in Montreal.

Anita Lahey's profile page