A Cliff Runs Through It

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the author of Calling Texas and Earth Prime.

The Hamilton Arts Council and the Hamilton branch of the Canadian
Authors Association have assembled a poetry anthology in two volumes to
celebrate the 150th anniversary of the city. The books are well
designed, feature full-page portraits of the 12 authors, and will mainly
be of interest to people in the Hamilton area and to the authors and
their friends. The art of poetry could not have been a central
consideration, because the poems seem to have been collected on the
principle that no one’s feelings should be hurt by being rejected.
Three of the poets—James Deahl, Richard Woolatt, and Mary
Partridge—are much better than the others in the anthology generally.
One mark of how Canadian poetry has advanced since Frank Scott wrote his
satire on the CAA, “The Canadian Authors Meet,” is that many of the
poems give a genuine sense of Hamilton as a real place with real
inhabitants.