Bronwen Wallace was recognized in the last decade of her short life as a major Canadian poet and a significant figure in the growth of the feminist movement. The author of five collections of poetry and a book of short fiction, most of which have been out of print for decades, Wallace worked in a range of poetic styles in a voice as intimate as a conversation between friends. Offering the full breadth of this celebrated poet's output in a single, long-awaited volume, Collected Poems of Bronwen Wallace brings the text of all five published collections back into print alongside unpublished poems from earlier in her career, allowing readers to see the stylistic evolution of her poetry from its first incarnation to her last written work. In an engaging and often moving tone, the poems draw the reader in even as they document the poet honing her craft during the turbulent 1970s and reveal her fascination with the politics of the personal, the everyday concerns of ordinary people, and inequality and violence. Carolyn Smart's introduction and notes supplement the collection, along with a bibliography that catalogues the scholarly and literary responses to Wallace's work for the first time. An exhilarating reading experience, Collected Poems of Bronwen Wallace celebrates the clarity, humour, righteous anger, and inclusivity of Wallace's poetry, which remains timely and original thirty years after her death.

Bronwen Wallace (1945-1989) was a Canadian poet, feminist, teacher, and mentor to many emerging writers. She lived in Kingston.

Bronwen Wallace's profile page

Carolyn Smart has written six previous collections of poetry, including The Way to Come Home (Brick Books, 1993), and Hooked: Seven Poems (Brick Books, 2009). Her memoir At the End of the Day (Penumbra Press, 2001) won first prize in the 1993 CBC Literary Contest. Smart is the founder of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and an editor for the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series of McGill-Queen’s University Press; since 1989 she has taught Creative Writing at Queen’s University. She lives with her family in the country north of Kingston.

Carolyn Smart's profile page

"To say that this collection is long overdue, as people typically do on these occasions, risks radical understatement, and we might productively ask ourselves why it has taken so long to bring back into print the works of a major Canadian feminist poet. Much is owed to the volume's editor, poet and close friend Carolyn Smart, for painstaking work and--one can only say--exquisite care." Canadian Literature

"Poet Bronwen Wallace (1945–1989) describes herself in "Sentimental Poem for My Mother" as "a statistic of the sixties/ marched to ban bombs end wars/discovered Marx and Women's Liberation/abortion marijuana brown rice/ moved as far as I could/ from the suburbs." It's one of her early poems published in Collected Poems of Bronwen Wallace which also includes the text and wonder of Wallace's five published collections of poetry." Herizons

“A Collected Poems of Bronwen Wallace is overdue. This one has everything that a lover of Wallace’s work or a scholar might desire. Smart’s introduction combines a personal account of Wallace with insightful critical observations. And the volume itself is beautiful. The poems are set with ample white space around them, and the red‐white‐and‐black bindings and dust jacket have an elegant simplicity that seems in keeping with Wallace’s work.” The Malahat Review