Anne Wilkinson
Description
Anne Cochran Wilkinson, a Canadian poet and writer was born in Toronto, Ontario at Craigleigh, the Rosedale home of her maternal grandfather, the banker and Ontario politician Sir Edmund Boyd Osler. The middle child of Mary Osler and lawyer George Gibbons, she grew up in privileged society in London, Ontario and, after her father's early death from multiple sclerosis in 1919, in Toronto and California, and at her grandfather's country estate at Roches Point on Lake Simcoe. Wilkinson was part of the modernist movement in Canadian poetry, one of only a few prominent women poets of the time, along with Dorothy Livesay and P. K. Page. By 1946 several of her poems had appeared in literary journals, and subsequently she published two collections of poetry, Counterpoint to Sleep (1951) and The Hangman Ties the Holly (1955), the latter of which was flagged by Northrup Frye as a volume of "poetry of particular importance" that year. She also published two books of prose before her untimely death from lung cancer in 1961: Lions in the Way (1956), a history of her maternal family, the Oslers, and Swann and Daphne (1960), a modern fairy tale for children. A founding editor and patron of the literary quarterly The Tamarack Review, her work appeared in several prominent Canadian publications of the day, including Northern Review. It was anthologized in The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse (ed. A.J.M. Smith, 1960), The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse (ed. Ralph Gustafson, 1975), Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960 (ed. Brian Terhearne, 2010, was broadcast on CBC Radio's Anthology, and was recorded on the album Six Toronto Poets, alongside the poems of W.W.E. Ross, Raymond Souster, Margaret Avison, James Reaney and Jay Macpherson. Her close friend A. J. M. Smith edited and introduced The Collected Poems of Anne Wilkinson and a Prose Memoir, which was posthumously published in 1968. Her writing was celebrated by artist/filmmaker Joyce Wieland and author Michael Ondaatje, and set to music by composer Oskar Morawetz. In the early 1990s it was re-examined by Joan Coldwell, who edited a new edition of the poems, as well as a volume of Wilkinson's autobiographical writings. (Information gathered from several sources.)
Books
The tightrope walker
Anne Wilkinson (1910-61) was one of the most celebrated Canadian writers of her time. Her success as a poet came against all odds: nothing in her background, from geography to genealogy, would have suggested a literary career. She lived her life and practised her art in Toronto at a time when the nerve centre of Canadian poetry was unquestionably Montreal. She was born into the highest levels of Toronto society, a daughter of the very distinguished Osler family. And yet she wrote poetry, and was published to great acclaim, through decades of marriage, child-rearing, divorce, and illness. From December 1947 to July 1956, the years during which she wrote her most successful poetry, Wilkinson kept journals; in due course she also wrote an autobiography, part of which appeared in a literary magazine shortly after she died. Joan Coldwell brings together the complete text of the autobiography with the poet's journals, some samples of her poetry, and a moving exchange of letters between Wilkinson and her mother. The journals vividly reveal the inner workings of the writer's mind and her struggles to create in a difficult environment. With an immediacy and power that only journals can achieve, these writings explore the nature of the creative process in a context of daily realities that are often harsh and sometimes heart-breaking. The autobiography tells the story in a different way, rearranged to fit the forms of a 'legitimate' genre. Together with Coldwell's introduction, these writings present a unique and moving self-portrait of a poet who died too young, at the peak of her career. This volume celebrates Wilkinson's life and work, and the spirit that informed them.
The essential Anne Wilkinson
An introduction to the poems of Anne Wilkinson, with foreword, biography, and bibliography. Volume 11 of the Essential Poets series published by The Porcupine's Quill.