Poetry
Able Muse Press, 2012
80 pages
ISBN 978-0-9865338-7-7
Sailing to Babylon
James Pollock is a poet of Northwest Passages, a learned Canadian poet with a splendid ear and a Romantic sensibility, a keen explorer of inner and outer states. Sailing to Babylon is not only a fully realized and accomplished work of art--it is also a noble book.
- Edward Hirsch
The metaphysics of the pause, the transition, the image: James Pollock has the Tranströmer instinct, but he plays the music in his very own key. These are haunting, deeply digested, nearly always surprising poems.
- Sven Birkerts
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
Essays
The Porcupine's Quill, 2012
224 pages
ISBN 978-0889843578
Typeset in Cartier Book. Printed on acid-free Zephyr Antique laid. Smyth sewn into sixteen page signatures with hand-tipped endleaves, front and back.
Finalist for the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays
You Are Here
You Are Here is the most compelling enquiry into the current state of poetry in this country since Northrop Frye's omnibus surveys in the 1950s. This is a book I have been waiting to read for most of my adult life.
- T. F. Rigelhof
The readings Pollock offers are thoughtful, knowledgeable, and precise. He is truly an excellent close reader of poems, his technical vocabulary is superb, and his command of the tradition enables him to tease out allusions and echoes of other works that are likely to be missed by the more casual reader.
- Robert Stacey,
University of Toronto Quarterly
Poetry
The Porcupine's Quill, 2015
64 pages
ISBN 978-0889843851
Named one of the best books of 2015 by The Partisan magazine
The Essential Daryl Hine
It takes a great editor to shape a vision of another poet's work that is both their own and true to the author; Pollock has done that here. The Essential Daryl Hine makes it obvious that the boy from B.C. really is one of the best we have. I don't think it's too great a leap to say that in Pollock, Daryl Hine has found his ideal editor. We should all be so lucky.
- Derek Webster, The Partisan
[T]he ideal way to get to know a poet who deserves to be better known.
- Brooke Clark, The Partisan