Selected Poems

by Austin Clarke, W. J. McCormick (Editor)

Book by Austin Clarke

Genres: Poetry

288 pages, Paperback

First published May 4, 1992

About the author

Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke was a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has been called "Canada's first multicultural writer".

Clarke had his early education in Barbados and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale, Duke and the University of Texas.

In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977).

Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec and at University of Western Ontario.From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

Reviews

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clarke was one of the leading Irish poets of his generation after Yeats and Kavanagh. Though he also wrote plays, novels and memoirs, Clarke's main contribution to Irish literature was his poetry, which demonstrated his technical prowess borrowed from traditional Irish poetry to write English verse based on complex patterns of assonance, consonance, and half rhyme. Describing his technique to Robert Frost, Clarke said, "I load myself down with chains and try to wriggle free." Given the heavy religious themes of sin and repentance, guilt and shame, and moralizing about women’s virtue in his poems, Clarke rarely managed to “wriggle free” to give voice to his heart.