Anne Wilkinson (poet)

Anne Wilkinson (September 21, 1910 – May 10, 1961) was a Canadian poet who was part of the modernist movement in Canadian poetry in the 1940s and 50s, one of only a few prominent women poets of the time along with Dorothy Livesay and P.K. Page. Wilkinson published two books of poetry, Counterpoint to Sleep (1951) and The Hangman Ties the Holly (1955). She also wrote a family history about her maternal family, the Oslers, and a children's story before her early death from cancer in 1961. She also published work in several prominent Canadian literary journals of the day, including Northern Review and the Tamarack Review. Forgotten for several decades, her work has enjoyed a minor revival since the publication in 2004 of Heresies: The Complete Poems of Anne Wilkinson (1924–1961), edited by Dean Irvine.

Bibliography

• Counterpoint to Sleep (poetry, 1951)
• The Hangman Ties the Holly (poetry, 1955)
• Lions in the Way: A Discursive History of the Oslers (family history, 1956)
• Swann and Daphne (children's story, 1960)

Posthumous books

• The Collected Poetry of Anne Wilkinson and a Prose Memoir (poetry/ memoir, edited by A.J.M. Smith, 1968)
• The Tightrope Walker: Autobiographical Writings of Anne Wilkinson (essays, edited by Joan Coldwell, 1992)
• Heresies: The Complete Poems of Anne Wilkinson (1924–1961), (poetry, edited by Dean Irvine, 2003)

References

• Coldwell, Joan. "Anne Wilkinson." The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Ed. William Toye, Oxford UP, 1983.
• Irvine, Dean. Introduction to Heresies: The Complete Poems of Anne Wilkinson (1924–1961). Montreal: Vehicule Press, 2004.
• Lecker, Robert. "Better Quick Than Dead: Anne Wilkinson's Poetry. Studies in Canadian Literature 3.1 (1978).

External links

• Anne Wilkinson at The Canadian Encyclopedia