Anne Corkett

Anne Corkett is a Canadian poet who has authored the collections: Between Seasons (Borealis,1981), The Salamander’s Laughter (Dundurn, 1985), and Summertown (St. Thomas Poetry Series, 1999). She lives in Orangeville, Ontario.

While in high school one of her friends was a niece of Margaret Avison. According to David A. Kent’s new Avison biography, Optic Heart (St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2026), “Corkett first met Avison while she was studying for her undergraduate degree at York [University], and over the next many years Avison acted as a counselor, literary advisor, friend, and support to her…” They began meeting weekly for tea, and Bible study. After Anne shared a few poems she’d written about Nova Scotia, Margaret gave her a book of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems, and they began to read poetry together. For many years she corresponded with Margaret Avison; the letters Corkett received are now archived at the University of Manitoba.

The following poem first appeared in Canadian Literature (Spring 1977).

Idle

I could believe
I am water — disliking
pressure, I meander; am much
given to idle
reflection.

There is a certain
amount to be learned
from the way water
manages its shallows,
the dull resistance
of stones, the earth
readily giving way.

I could believe
I am all things did
I not lack the perfect
accord of things whose
purpose is not
to seek purpose
but to teach there is
no elemental bar to the design.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.

Margaret Avison*

Margaret Avison (1918—2007) is one of Canada’s most-celebrated poets. She received the Governor General’s Award twice ― for her collections Winter Sun (1960) and No Time (1990) ― was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1984, received the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2003 for Concrete and Wild Carrot, and the Leslie K. Tarr Award (2005) for outstanding contribution to Christian writing in Canada. Her archives are held at the University of Manitoba.

I had the privilege of contributing twice to presentations she gave at a writers’ conference near her home in downtown Toronto ― first in November of 2003 where I read a few of her poems for her (including the one in this post) as extended readings were becoming taxing for her ― and again one year later when I interviewed her. That interview (which I believe is the last she ever gave) appeared in Image, and was later included in her autobiography I Am Here And Not Not-There (2009, The Porcupine’s Quill).

The following poem is from her collection Concrete and Wild Carrot (2002, Brick Books). It also appears in my anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry (2016, Poiema/Cascade).

On a Maundy Thursday Walk

The Creator was
walking by the sea, the
Holy Book says. Finely-tuned
senses — flooded with
intense awareness — tested
a clear serene constancy.

Who can imagine it, sullied
as our senses are? Faulty as are even our
most excellent makings?

The perfection of
created Being, in the perfect
morning was born from the walker-by-the-sea's
imagination. At a word —
the hot smell of sunned rock, of
the sea, the sea, the sound of lapping, bird-calls,
the sifting sponginess of sand
under the sandals, delicate.
April light—all, at a word
had become this almost-
overwhelming loveliness.

Surely the exultation —
the Artist
Himself immersed in
His work, finding it flawless —
intensified the so soon
leaving (lifted out of
mortal life for good
forever).

That too eludes
us who disbelieve that we
also shall say goodbye to
trees and cherished friends and
sunsets and crunching snow
to travel off
into a solo death.

How much more, that
(suffering this
creation to go under
its Maker, and us all)
He, the Father of love, should stake it all
on a sufficient
indeed on an essential
pivot.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Margaret Avison: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Margaret Avison*

Margaret Avison (1918—2007) is a Canadian poet who has been describe in large language by many. George Bowering, Canada's first Poet Laureate, referred to her as, “the best poet we have had,” and Michael Higgins, of St. Thomas University, has called her “arguably Canada’s pre-eminent poet writing in English.” Judith Fitzgerald, writing in the Globe and Mail, described her as: “An original, an authentic visionary without the flashily splashy trappings so often accorded those whose egos impose themselves upon others in their dubiously designated ‘poetry,’ Avison praises Creation in all its transplendent awesome/awful mutations.”

The following poem comes from her posthumous book Listening: last poems (2009). My review of that collection, for Trinity Western University's journal, Verge, is available here.

The Eternal One

can winkle out
an unacknowledged
doubt, or a hedged memory
in the dim way of being
between His timelessnesses.

His nestlings are
sheltered within
deep-bosomed trees;
these raise soft domes, care
for the air. We breathe.
Underneath, when
stunned by sunmelt
their felt dimness
is shimmery rest.
Unquestioning at last,
much, lost or unremembered,
murmurs peacefully
under His
timeless largesse.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Margaret Avison: first post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Boethius

Boethius (c.480—c.526) is a philosopher who was born into an aristocratic family in Rome. He became known for his theological tracts, and for his poetic work, The Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote while imprisoned. He was also known as an Aristotle scholar, and for his theories on mathematics and music. The Consolation of Philosophy became one of the most popular and influential philosophical works of the Middle Ages. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, "The main argument of the discourse is the transitoriness and unreality of all earthly greatness and the superior desirability of the things of the mind."

Eventually Boethius was executed by King Theodoric the Great who thought he was conspiring against him with the Eastern Roman Empire.

Margaret Avison, in her 1993 Pascal Lectures at the University of Waterloo, quoted Boethius as saying, "Eternity, then, is clearly a property of the mind of God. God ought not to be considered as older than the created world in the extent of time, but rather in the immediacy of his nature."

The following passage was translated by David R. Stavitt.

from The Consolation of Philosophy

What strife breaks the civil bonds
of the things of this world? What God would set
such incompatible truths loose
to struggle thus with one another?
Either could stand alone, but together
how can their contradictions be joined?
Or is there some way that they can get on
that the human mind, enmeshed in flesh,
cannot discern? The flame is covered,
and in the darkness the world's subtle
connections are hidden. And yet we feel
the warmth of the love that holds together
all that there is in eternal truth
that knows what it seeks and has its end
in its beginning. But which of us yearns
to learn those things he already knows?
And is that wisdom or is it blindness?
(And how do we know that we not know
what we do not know?) If it were found,
could the ignorant seeker recognize it?
From our minds to the mind of God
is an awesome leap: the infinite number
of separate truths that are yet all one
leave us breathless. The body's dense
flesh obscures our recollection
of the separate truths and the one truth
and yet allows us at least to suspect
that we all live in an awkward state
with inklings of our ignorance
that turn out to be our greatest wisdom—
as if we had long ago ascended
and beheld from on high the exalted vision
of which we now retain nothing
but the sense of loss of that exaltation.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Sally Ito

Sally Ito is originally from Alberta, but now lives in Winnipeg, where she is Writer-in-residence at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture. She has published three poetry collections: Frogs in the Rain Barrel, A Season of Mercy, and most recently Alert to Glory (2011, Turnstone Press). Ito reflects the diversity of her literary heritage with allusions to such diverse influences as the Bible, Jonathan Swift, T.S. Eliot and Margaret Avison.

Don Domanski wrote, “Alert to Glory shows us in poem after poem the subtle, fluent essence of the sacred, how it can heighten every thought and gesture...[T]his book is nothing less than a call and invocation to our deeper natures. No easy task and harder still to do it with such elegance.” The following poem comes from this excellent new collection.

Apprehend

To handcuff the world, make it prisoner to sense and scrutiny.
To apprehend. That is the poet’s task. The lonely jailer
seizing at the company of things. Not to possess or own
but rather to perceive the world like a nerve quickening
to touch, or a flank quivering to the wind. To apprehend
is surely one of God’s commandments to the steward, that poet,
who in his hour as policeman might enjoy the brief moment
of a world in fetters for him. Catch-and-release—the finny,
slippery silver underneath the hand—is the currency of joy,
the fine paid for the alertness and watching which is the poet’s
constant state. He apprehends, and the world is seized
and God makes wonder of his heart.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov (1923—1997) was born in England. After the war she married an American, moved to New York and became an American citizen. In the US, she came under the influence of William Carlos Williams and other American poets. She, in turn, was significant in the advancement of Margaret Avison’s career — even though Avison had recently embraced Christian faith, and Levertov remained unconvinced.

Levertov’s conversion came in 1984. In 1997 she put together her selection of poems on religious themes — drawn from seven earlier collections — The Stream & the Sapphire. In the foreword she says the book traces her “own slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith”. She put the book together “as a convenience to those readers who are themselves concerned with doubt and faith”.

Flickering Mind

Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places:
a quick glance, and away—and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop
to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river's purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn. Not you,
it is I am absent.
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow,
you the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the fountain's heart
the sapphire I know is there?

This is the first  Kingdom Poets post about Denise Levertov: second post, third post, fourth post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

George Whipple

George Whipple was born in New Brunswick in 1927, grew up in Toronto, and presently lives in British Columbia. He is the author of eleven poetry collections, and has attracted the praise of such literary figures as: Northrop Frye, Louis Dudek, John B. Lee, and Margaret Avison.

He has translated poetry from French, and is a visual artist — often adding line drawings to his poetry collections. His inspiration sometimes comes from painters, particularly those associated with Canada’s “Group of Seven”. The cover illustrations for the two volumes of his collected poetry (the third, not yet released by Penumbra Press), feature paintings by Tom Thomson.

His inspiration often comes from his faith and from the natural world around him.

When asked “How does a longstanding spiritual discipline connect to the practice of writing poetry?” he said — “My spiritual life and my poetry are one. The secret, sacred revelations given to me since as far back as I can remember, intuitions of eternity unfolding in time, were poetry to me before I had any presumptions of preparing myself to be a writer...” (Poetry And Spiritual Practice).

Praise
-------------— for M. Travis Lane

I praise
----heron, hare,
--------hawk and grouse,
doodlebug and slug,
----kinkajou and kittiwake,
--------barracuda, kangaroo,
and shining in the ear
----lobe of the sky
--------the diamond earring
------------of a 747.

I praise
----rutabaga, goober,
--------sassafras and cannabis,
kinnikinic and kale,
----and each morning Him
--------who gives the present
------------of the present
--------every day — the past
------------already opened,
the future in the mail.

This is the first of two Kingdom Poets posts about George Whipple: second post

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Sarah Klassen

Sarah Klassen was born close to Winnipeg, Manitoba, which she still makes her home — although she has spent time teaching in both Lithuania and Ukraine. She is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Curious Beatitude (2006) which won the Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry — an award which has honoured many of Canada’s finest poets, including Margaret Avison.

She is best known for her poetry, which speaks, among other things, of her faith, and the Germanic heritage of her Mennonite upbringing. She has also started to publish fiction, including her short-story collection The Peony Season, and her recent novel A Feast of Longing.

The following comes from a piece called Poems for Advent, which begins with an Emily Dickinson quote — “There’s a certain slant of light...” ; since I am just including the first section (which is quite independent of the others), I will simply call it:

Poem for Advent

He comes at last, the long-expected painter
in working clothes, carrying ladders, paint-
splattered dropsheets. He’ll cover everything
and scan each wall for cracks
--------------------caused by the building shifting,
plaster and scrape, making rough places plain.
If he’s inclined he’ll hum
--------------------Lo how a rose ere blooming
while I remove from every room all hindrances:
the vining ivy, ornaments, those matched lamps
that might get in the way of things. Myself.

When everything is ready he’ll begin.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

Read my Canadian Mennonite review of Sarah Klassen's poetry collection A Curious Beatitude here

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Sarah Klassen: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Margaret Avison

Margaret Avison (1918–2007) is one of Canada’s foremost poets, and the recipient of numerous awards. Twice she has won the Governor General’s Award for poetry, and is an officer of the Order of Canada. When she received the Griffin Poetry Prize for Concrete and Wild Carrot (2002), the judges described her as “a national treasure”.

Her conversion to Christian faith came in early 1963, and has been a dominant feature of her poetry ever since. What makes her poems stand out, among the work of so many poets, is the way they grow deeper and deeper with subsequent readings. Their density, initially obscured through her unorthodox sentence structure, slowly reveals their meanings. The following poem comes from her collection Momentary Dark (2006).

Exposure

Every living thing
as a mass or a
morsel, or one who moves with
the speed of light, alike —
each, in His miracle of
particularity,
the Lord knows.

What is left, as though unknown
by the Knower’s and
the rebel’s mutual
consent, the psalmist calls
chaff in the wind.

Even a pear on a
leafy July bough,
or a begrimed
pear on a downtown fruit stand,
or a pale piece of pear in a
hospital dish proffered
a toothless mouth,
blank now toward
sustenance, and breath:
even such pears also are
known.

But unlike other
living things
being slow, slow to learn
in this interlude,
life, just being under
the sun, we
vacillate between awe, and
apprehension lest we be known.

The Knower, knowing, waits
our turn.

Posted with permission of McClelland & Stewart, and of Joan Eichner.

My interview with Margaret Avison appeared in Image in 2005. Subsequently it was republished in Margaret’s autobiography, I Am Here And Not Not-There in 2009 by The Porcupine’s Quill.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Margaret Avison: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca