Full Moon: An Anthology of Canadian Women Poets

Carolyn Hlus was a lecturer in English literature at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Full Moon contains poetry by 26 Canadian women poets, young and old, ranging from apprentices like Janis Rapoport, Maggie Helwig, and Elizabeth Allen to upstarts like Sharon Nelson, Diana Hayes, and Roo Borson to well-established journeywomen like Lorna Crozier, Mary di Michele, and Bronwen Wallace to the grand dames of Canlit like Miriam Waddington and Elizabeth Brewster. The collection definitively portrays the wide parameters of style in Canadian women’s poetry, which, in turn, expresses the vast range of Canadian women’s experiences. Although the poetry could be labelled feminist, it is at the same time good mainstream poetry that could appear in any anthology of Canadian poetry.

There is no better description of the work than Janice LaDuke and Steve Luxton’s self-analysis in the foreword:

On these pages confessionalist, self-disclosing poems abound. We have Elizabeth Allen’s heart-rending poem of isolation and loss (“Preparing for Winter”), Mary di Michele’s and Carolyn Smart’s vulnerable celebrations of female friendship (“The Passion Artists” and “Flying”), and Bronwen Wallace’s revelation concerning helplessness (“Dreams of Rescue”). With few exceptions — Bronwen Wallace’s and Sharon Nelson’s quasi-narrative pieces — the poems are lyrics often sharing an affirmative if rather sad, meditative mood. Most of them are also engaged in an open-handed manner with the inward world. There are poems about isolation (Allen), the confusion and perplexities of identity (Brewster, Cadsby, MacPhee, Keating, Nelson), domestic oppression and maintenance (Nelson, Sarah, Welch), conflicts involved with bearing and keeping of children (Brown, Davis, Jones), women relating to women (di Michele, Smart, Wallace) and women relating to others (Allen, Kogawa, Wallace). Also featured are poems of witchcraft, magic and incantation — those more traditional roads to power for women (Hayes, Keating).

The editors deserve praise, too, for not only their inclusivity of female content, but for careful arrangement and proper presentation. Each poet’s work is prefaced with her photograph and a brief biographical sketch, which includes her publication credits. This text deserves a place on every feminist’s bookshelf and on the curriculum of all Canadian literature courses in women’s studies programs.