Winner, New Brunswick Book Award for Poetry
A Quill & Quire Best Book of the Year

Like the novella in fiction, the long poem is an oft-neglected form. Too long for publication in most literary journals and anthologies, too short to merit book-length publication, the long poem occupies a lonely space in literature. M. Travis Lane is a master of the form, in which her considerable poetic skills reach their apex. There are few that match her brilliance. This volume collects all of her long works — most of them now out of print — from a five-decade commitment to the art.

M. Travis Lane has long flown under the radar of Can Lit, crafting luminous poems and sharp literary criticism — much of it published in the Fiddlehead, one of Canada's premier literary journals — but in recent years her work has been drawing the attention it deserves. Evidence of this recognition is her 2015 Governor General's Award nomination for Crossover, a collection the still-vital poet published at the age of 81. Her poetry is modernist, dense, and highly allusive, drawing adeptly on classical and biblical sources, imbued with a feminist and ecocritical perspective. Her musical lines, vivid metaphors, and phenomenological acumen launch her into the company of such poetic luminaries as Don McKay, Jan Zwicky, and Tim Lilburn. In the long poetic form, these qualities reach their highest expression. This volume, an exquisite collection that brings together her long poems for the first time, constitutes an important addition to the canon of Canadian literature and to the canon of feminist literature in North America.

One of Canada's most distinguished writers, M. Travis Lane lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She received her B.A. (Junior PBK) from Vassar College, and her M.A. and PhD. from Cornell University. She and her husband Lauriat Lane came to New Brunswick in 1960. Travis taught briefly at Cornell and at the University of New Brunswick and is a Honorary Research Associate with the English department at U.N.B. She is a member of the Voice of Women for Peace and a Raging Granny, a member of the Writer's Federation of New Brunswick and a Lifetime member of the League of Canadian Poets.

She has published nineteen books of poetry and two of prose. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in Literary Arts, and the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for High Achievement in Literary Arts. She was also shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 2015.

M. Travis Lane's profile page

• Winner, New Brunswick Book Award for Poetry
• Winner, One of Quill & Quire's Best Books of The Year

"Lane’s imagination, precision, and control of sound and image are as astonishing as the rich diversity of her subjects. This is a book to luxuriate in."

poets.ca

"With a multiplicity of voices, these poems offer a generously imagined theatre of the human. M. Travis Lane's The Witch of the Inner Wood is more than a rich, wide-ranging collection. Here is one of Canada's finest poets at work, revealing the power of her lyrical voice. A treasure of a book."

Anne Simpson

"M. Travis Lane keeps the Aristotelian tradition in poetry: to move from lyric poetry to longer verse forms. Thus she has always done — with meet cadence, with right diction, with sweet wisdom. But the Collected Long Poems gather at long last her consistent achievement, her persistent excellence, her insistent, epic impulse. Lane accepts our collective debt to classical poets, the undead — deathless — bards of antiquity. The wording is precise, the imagery compelling, the verses supple. If you have not read Lane before, prepare to travel: like T.S. Eliot, she wants you to have a transporting experience in your imagination. If you have read Lane before, prepare for fresh astonishment. She is Homeric breadth and Sapphic brevity in this suite of superb poems."

George Elliott Clarke

"'You either go or you get sent.' If you've never thought of poetry as page-turner, wait till you delve into M. Travis Lane's masterful long poems, collected together here for the first time. Hypnotist, conductor, and hobgoblin, she liberates life from its usual haze, so we may consider it in the changing light — so we must. Almost any single line by Lane seals the case for the necessity of the lyric. This welcome volume reshapes the narrative around the Canadian long poem, placing one of our finest poets at the centre of the rise of this widely beloved form, now an essential component of our literature."

Anita Lahey

"Canadian poetry has always had secret masters; poets who, without fanfare, deepened their style and vision — and extended the presiding genius of our tradition. M. Travis Lane is one of these figures. She has become, for our attitudinizing era, an especially powerful example of how emotional complexity and psychological depth aren't a matter of 'spontaneous overflow' but are built from lucid stanzas, uncompromising compression, and effective metaphors. These qualities can be seen in the astonishing long poems selected for The Witch of the Inner Wood, a book that will cement Lane's status as one of our most significant poets."

Carmine Starnino