Heresies: The Complete Poems of Anne Wilkinson, 1924–1961

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Anne Wilkinson published two volumes of poems, Counterpoint to Sleep and
The Hangman Ties the Holly, during her sadly short life (1910–1961).
Her carefully wrought verse, with its metaphorical boldness and often
witty wordplay, has found a comparatively modest but assured place in
Canadian literature, partly thanks to A.J.M. Smith, who shared many of
her poetic principles and published an earlier Collected Poems in 1968.
But “Collected” is different from “Complete,” and Dean Irvine
has now printed all Wilkinson’s finished poems (including 46 ignored
by Smith) in a state-of-the-art edition that contains over a hundred
pages of textual notes.

This is an excellent development, and all devotees of Canadian poetry
should be grateful.

That being acknowledged, it may seem churlish to express reservations,
especially since I played a very small part in the movement calling for
reliable and accessible texts of our main writers. There are, however,
aspects of this edition that trouble me. First, the title. True, it was
a proposed title for a third volume that Wilkinson did not live to
publish, but (as Irvine admits) its meaning here is somewhat obscure,
and it has the additional disadvantage of leading readers to expect
something Wilkinson does not provide (no controversial theology here!).
Why not just Complete Poems?

Second, Irvine proudly notes that he prints 46 Wilkinson poems that
have never been published before, yet he doesn’t seem to identify
these poems—at least, I have looked for but not found the information
in his bulky and rather complicated apparatus criticus.

Third, valuable as the textual notes may be, there are no explanatory
notes, and, now that half a century has passed, a number of her
references are in need of annotation and explication. For many readers,
this is a more crucial matter than variant readings.

Still, the poems are attractively as well as accurately printed, and
Irvine offers a brief biography as well as a useful critical
introduction. His devotion to Wilkinson’s work is admirable, and his
edition may well prove definitive.