James Pollock

Poet · Critic · Editor

I can't remember the last time I was so moved by a single collection. Sailing to Babylon reminded me why I fell in love with poetry in the first place.

Inderjit Deogun,
THE SAVVY READER

[You Are Here is] an erudite accounting of Canadian poetic identity in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. [Pollock] substantiates his strong claims with argumentation so textured and intelligent that one feels dared to disagree.

Stewart Cole, THE URGE

In Pollock, Daryl Hine has found his ideal editor. Reading [The Essential Daryl Hine], it's possible to tune into Hine at the wavelengths on which he was broadcasting. The experience, for me, is tremendous, exquisite, and heartbreaking.

Derek Webster, THE PARTISAN

James Pollock is the author of Sailing to Babylon, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award in Poetry, runner-up for the Posner Poetry Book Award, and winner of an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association; and You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, a finalist for the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays. He is also editor of The Essential Daryl Hine, which made The Partisan's list of the best books of 2015. A new book of his poems, Durable Goods, is forthcoming from Véhicule Press. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, AGNI, The Walrus, and many other

journals; they have been awarded the Manchester Poetry Prize and the  Magma Editors' Prize, and have been reprinted in anthologies in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., including The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry. His critical essays and reviews have appeared in Contemporary Poetry Review, Canadian Notes & Queries, Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. He is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Loras College, where he teaches poetry writing, Shakespeare, Canadian literature, Greek and Latin classics in translation, and modern and contemporary American poetry. He lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin.

News

The Latest

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My poems "Lighter,""Scale," "Screw," "Sewing Needle," and "Microphone" have been awarded the £10,000 Manchester Poetry Prize for 2020, the U.K.'s largest poetry prize for unpublished work. To read these poems, click here and scroll to page 26. To see a virtual reading of all the shortlisted pieces and comments by the judges, click here.

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What I'm Writing

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I'm writing a long poem in terza rima, called Oxford in Snow, set at the University of Oxford, that involves angels, architecture, muses, demons, ancient books, and some of the poets and writers who studied, taught or lived at Oxford or otherwise visited there, including among others Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Larkin and Hill. Not to mention Northrop Frye and Robertson Davies.

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I've also been writing a lot of short poems about things like household tools and appliances, several of which have recently appeared or are forthcoming in journals.

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Forthcoming Publications

​Speaking of which, a collection of these poems, Durable Goods, is forthcoming from Véhicule Press/Signal Editions in Montreal. The tentative publication date is Fall 2022.

My poem "Dryer" is forthcoming in Plume.

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"Kettle" is forthcoming in The Walrus.

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"Shower" and "Toilet" are forthcoming in Event magazine, either in issue 49/3 (Winter 2020/2021) or in issue 50/1 (Spring/Summer 2021).

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"Barometer," “Umbrella,” “Sprinkler,” “Television,” and “Flashlight” are forthcoming in Geist.

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​Recent Publications

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"Wind Turbine" and "Oscillating Fan" were published in The Antigonish Review, issue 201-202, in October, 2020.

"Mirror," "Faucet," and "Coffee Grinder" were published in Vol. 8 Issue 1 (Spring & Summer) of The Humber Literary Review, in print, in September, 2020. An electronic version, including these poems, is available online (on page 29).

"Goose Neck Lamp" was awarded the £1000 Editors' Prize in the Magma Poetry Competition in the U.K., and was published in issue 77 of Magma Poetry in July, 2020. To read the poem, go to the Magma Poetry Competition page and click on the link to the winning poems.

"Washing Machine" and "Refrigerator" were published in issue 115 of Geist (nominally the Winter 2020 issue) in June 2020.

"Ceiling Fan" and "Spectacles" are read and discussed by the editors in episode 82 of the Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile podcast, which came online in May, 2020. They were also published in issue 100 of Painted Bride Quarterly.

"Iron" was published in the Winter 2020 issue of Contemporary Verse 2.

​"Crossing the Seine" was published in the April, 2019, issue of The Walrus, and posted online on The Walrus's website on Feb. 14, 2020.

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​I did an epic interview with Nigel Beale in late December, 2018, for his podcast series The Biblio File. The interview came online in April, 2019.

My essay "A Season in Hell: On The Chemical Life by Jim Johnstone" was published in issue eleven.3 of Hamilton Arts & Letters, 16 Feb. 2019.

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​Four of my poems from Sailing to Babylon were reprinted in The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry, edited by Jim Johnstone, and published by Anstruther Books in 2018.

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My essay "Life Parries Death: The Poetry of Elise Partridge" was published in Canadian Notes & Queries, #99, in May 2017.