- Concrete and Wild Carrot
- Margaret Avison
- 1894078241
- 9781894078245
- 74
- 2002
- 5.5" × 8.75"
- $15.00
to buy with PayPal or a Credit Card
Cover art:
Photograph by Paul Best
e-book:
The e-book edition of this title will be available by the end of summer 2013.Listen to Poems from Concrete and Wild Carrot
Winner of the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize and of the 2003 CAA Jack Chalmers Poetry Award and Globe 100 book for 2003
"...Margaret Avison is a national treasure. For many decades she has forged a way to write, against the grain, some of the most humane, sweet and profound poetry of our time." - from the Griffin Poetry Prize Judges' Citation
In Margaret Avison's new poems, little pleasures are bound up with larger ones. Her slightest subjects - beloved Toronto parks with their population of oaks, firs, squirrels, dogs, kids, even ants, and the minutest sighs of her contemporary urban soundscape - all have their being within an immense composition that calls and hauls us to a largeness, a category-breaking "always unthinkable" beyond.
"Words have their life too, won't/ compact into a theorem," Avison says, and this is certainly true of hers.
To myself everywhere:
Cry out, "Break!" Break
all our securities, and break out!
Explore only the ranges
beyond our mastering. Take on
the inexorable demands made by
a norm of unpremeditated excellence!
from "Alternatives to Riots but all Citizens Must Play"
Concrete and Wild Carrot is Margaret Avison's sixth book of poems, her first with Brick Books - though we now distribute her Lancelot Press books. She is one of Canada's most respected writers, still at the top of her form in a career that stretches back to the 1940s, and during which she has gained three honorary degrees and two Governor General's Awards for Poetry (for Winter Sun and No Time).
5th printing
March 3, 2010 - Heritage Toronto and the Toronto Leagcy Project launch new plaque program
Margaret Avison is one of 6 of the first honourees in this new program.
Full story and images of the plaques
Spring 2011 – The End of an Era: A Review of Margaret Avison’s Listening: Last Poems by D.S. Martin in Verge: a journal of the arts and Christian faith, Vol. 1, No. 1. D.S. Martin reviews Margaret Avison’s final poetry collection and discusses many of her earlier books, including Concrete and Wild Carrot.
More Brick Books by Margaret Avison
- No Time (1997)
- Not Yet but Still (1997)
- sunblue (1978)
Reviews
- ... Awesome Avison by Ken Babstock (The Globe and Mail (June 21, 2003))
- Margaret Avison. Concrete and Wild Carrot by R.W. Stedingh (Event, The Douglas College Review 32.2, Summer 2003 )
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Jack Illingworth (Amazon.com)
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Harold Heft (Books in Canada)
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Robyn Sarah (National Post, January 18, 2003)
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Patrick Woodcock (Quill & Quire, January 2003)
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Barbara Carey (Toronto Star, December 15, 2002)
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Judges' Citation (2003 Griffin Poetry Prize)
- Organic Re-Membering by Jes Battis (Canadian Literature # 183, winter 2004)
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Melanie Brannagan (Prairie Fire Review of Books, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2012))
- The End of an Era: A Review of Margaret Avison\'s Listening: Last Poems by D.S. Martin (Verge: a journal of the arts and Christian faith, Vol 1, No. 1, Spring 2011)
- Our Best Poet? by D.S. Martin (Faith Today, September /October 2003)
- High Spirited Echo Powers Local Pair by Barbara Carey (Toronto Star, Sunday, December 15, 2002)
- A Plethora of Talented Canadian Poets by George Fetherling (Saint John Telegraph Journal (The New Brunswick Reader), August 23, 2003)
- No More Pastors, Please! We Need Some Poets by Alex MacLeod (Presbyterian Record, November 2003)
- How Margaret Avison’s Life Has Graced Our Lives by Esther McIlveen (Canadian Christianity (canadianchristianity.com), August 2007)
- Rainbows and worn out shoes by Esther McIlveen (Canadian Christianity, August 2007)
- Concrete and Wild Carrot by Margaret Avison by Joanna M. Weston (The Danforth Review)
- Poetry with the Power of Observation by George Fetherling (Vancouver Sun, Saturday, August 23, 2003)
- Introduction to Margaret Avison by Manina Jones (Launch of Always Now at UWO, October 2, 2003)
- Poets Keep up Pace after 80 by Bill Robertson (Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Saturday, July 12, 2003)
