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Language Acts


Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry 1976 to the 21st Century
eds. Jason Camlot and Todd Swift
Essays
March 2007

Vehicule Press
ISBN-10: 1-55065-225-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-55065-225-3
Can $22.95
paper / 276 pages / 4 appendices

Language Acts: Anglo-Quebec Poetry 1976 to the 21st Century brings together twenty provocative essays on the state of English-language poetry in Québec since 1976. Born and raised during this historically resonant period of Trudeauism, organized Québecois nationalism, sovereignty referenda, language legislation, and profound demographic and cultural change, Anglo-Québec poetry has come of age in the 21st century as a literature with its own distinct arguments about itself, and its own poetical acts in language.

Featuring essays on many important, even canonical figures such as Robert Allen, Anne Carson, Leonard Cohen, Louis Dudek, D.G. Jones, Irving Layton, Michael Harris, Erin Moure, David McGimpsey, Robyn Sarah, and Peter Van Toorn, and on a wide range of poetry activities including those of the Véhicule Poets and the Montreal Spoken Word scene, Language Acts is the first critical collection of its kind to appear in over forty years, and will set the terms used to discuss English language poetry in Québec for years to come. As such it is an indispensable guide to a body of 20th and early 21st century writing that is simultaneously American and post-colonial, Canadian and uniquely Québecois.


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