An extended review of a 2026 book by David A. Kent
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St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2026. 484 Pages. $40
How do you write a biography about someone who is resistant to having any research done about them at all? David A. Kent faced this roadblock in his new biography of Margaret Avison’s early life and career as one of Canada’s greatest poets. After Kent had dedicated substantial energy to the project, Avison told him, “we must… keep out of each other’s knitting” – meaning she would help him no further, and expected to be left alone. This led to a 17-year hiatus where he honoured her wishes by waiting until after her death in 2007 before continuing the project.
The way poets look at the world makes them highly susceptible to the wooing of the Holy Spirit. Margaret Avison, already a highly respected poet, was transformed – like many poets before and since – dedicating her life and poetry to Christ. This is just one aspect of her story that makes Optic Heart worth reading. That she has uniquely gained the respect of both the literary elite and the Christian community, offers much to others on a serious journey of faith and art.
In her early life we see a young woman, adrift from her childhood faith and neglectful of her own health, in her headlong pursuit of pure poetry. We see an ambitious writer, too idealistically confident in her vision to realize she was making enemies criticizing the early work of such poets as P.K. Page and Irving Layton (in her personal idealized opinions expressed in her reviews for the Canadian Forum, the most influential literary review in the country). Avison repeatedly left any position that could become a steady job or career, invade her privacy or distract her from her goal.
David Kent’s extensive research shares Avison’s connections with the literary elite, including her friendship with Northrop Frye, and her romance with John Frederick Nims, who was later instrumental in her work appearing in Poetry magazine – and with such luminaries as F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith and Marshall McLuhan. In 1956 she received a Guggenheim fellowship which took her to Chicago, and enhanced her reputation, paving the way for her triumphal publication of Winter Sun (1960).
Long before it appeared, there had been a growing anticipation about when Margaret Avison would finally have a book available. She had had poems appear in numerous anthologies, John Crowe Ransom had selected four for The Kenyon Review, and her name had frequently come up in articles about new Canadian poetry. The end result was Winter Sun winning the Governor General’s Award for 1960.
Kent says, “Ever since the publication of Winter Sun had satisfactorily concluded twenty-five years of dedicated work, Avison had felt at odds. Despite having published her first book of poetry to high praise and recognition, she at times experienced depression as well as a sense of anti-climax.” It is here, around the 250-page-mark, where Kent discloses Avison’s remarkable transformation.
She had been working in the ladies’ cloakroom at Victoria College, U of T, when a stranger asked her, “Do you know the joy of knowing the Lord Jesus?” Avison tried to brush her off, but didn’t want to appear unkind; so she accepted a note from her with the address of a nearby church. It took months before she chose to investigate the church. Significantly later, after having become friends with Margaret Clarkson, the hymn writer who mentored her in the faith, Margaret Avison faced her crisis moment. She believed, but knew Christ would demand her all, and she wanted to maintain control of her poetry. Finally on 4 January 1963, while wrestling it out, she hurled her Bible across the room and said, “Okay, take the poetry too!”
David Kent continues, “Shortened lines, simpler diction, and irregular rhythms create a new openness in Avison’s language in the first poems after her conversion as she urgently seeks to express her faith and to reach readers more directly.” In immersing himself in every presentation, letter and essay, Kent shows us how Avison’s approach to poetry was renewed in light of her experience of Christ. Avison’s next collection The Dumbfounding (Norton, 1966) shared her religious poems at the centre of the book (with Denise Levertov helping in their selection and arrangement) to demonstrate how her faith was central to her further development as a poet. (It would take another 13 years, before Levertov also became a Christian, in her case through the writing of a poem.)
Through the unbiased eye of the scholar, Optic Heart presents Margaret Avison’s most laudable and most flawed behaviours, her significant accomplishments and how both her life and her poetic vision were transformed through her conversion. I find Avison’s reflections on the role of a Christian poet, as shared here – including how writing is not a safe venture – to be well worth meditating upon (p. 331).
Optic Heart may only appeal to a specialized few: poets, artists, scholars, lovers of biography, and those interested in how Christ changes everything in someone’s life. This volume ends just prior to Avison’s third book sunblue (1978). Back then someone might have thought that her illustrious career might be starting to wind down, but they would have been oh-so wrong.
The launch event for Optic Heart will be on Saturday, 25 April at 2:30, St. Thomas's Church, 383 Huron Street, Toronto. Pre-orders of the book made by March 31 save $8.
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