‘These are poems steeped in the Bible, but always imbued with genuine emotion and insight into contemporary life and without a tinge of self-righteousness.’
Always Now: Collected Poems of Margaret Avison, encompasses in three volumes all of the published books, from Winter Sun (1960) to Concrete and Wild Carrot (2002), and is framed by a gathering of uncollected and new poems respectively. When complete, Always Now will present all of the poems, up to 2002, that Margaret Avison wishes to preserve. sunblue and No Time, the two books collected here, are growth rings; the poems are rings within rings of reflection on the creation and the Creator. In these poems, Margaret Avison’s faith, now constant, is dynamic, challenging her as well as her reader (‘from the namby-pams / of the cloaking faith I wear / deliver me’).