by Heather Pyrcz. “Caveat: A short history of Canadian poetry will not please everyone. Poets are left out, lacunae that some will think unforgivable. Frye suggested that anthologies ought to have blank pages at the end on which the reader may enter his own neglected favorites. I have used a 1945 birth date as my end point, although there are a few exceptions for reasons of inclusion. I have clustered the poets in unfamiliar groupings. There are many constellations we could form, each one revealing something different and important about the poets. This digital history page, I hope, will be thought of as a reference point, one of many in an ongoing conversation about the rich meaning of Canadian poetry.”

This awesome resource can be found at youngpoets.ca.

Canada
http://www.youngpoets.ca/history/history.php

“And Sometimes Y tackles big questions facing the English language. The show’s host is Russell Smith.”

Past shows online.

Date: From January 6 to June 30, 2007. Saturdays 11:30 a.m.- 12:00 p.m. on CBC Radio One (Repeated Tuesdays 11:30 a.m.- 12:00 p.m.)
Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/andsometimesy

“This is an independent library of short, recorded audio readings by Canadian authors of fiction and poetry…. The authors you’ll find here have all had books published by recognized Canadian publishing houses.” Trevor Cole is the author and journalist behind AuthorsAloud.”

Canada
http://www.authorsaloud.com/

“For forty-five years, Canadian Literature has explored and celebrated the best Canadian writers and writing. Each issue contains articles, poems and an extensive book reviews section.”

You can also find an extensive online archive of reviews from the print journal.

University of British Columbia, Vancouver,  British Columbia,  Canada
http://www.canlit.ca/

“The Canadian Poetry Archive features selected poems from over 100 early English- and French-language Canadian poets. Digitized from public domain anthologies found in the National Library of Canada’s rich literature collection, the poems represent some of Canada’s most notable poetry from the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Now under the aegis of Library and Archives Canada, the Canadian Poetry Archive celebrated the First-ever World Poetry Day on March 21, 2000.

Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa,  Ontario,  Canada
http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/canvers/index-e.html

Canadian Poetry: An Electronic Resource is edited by D.M.R. Bentley. This site features a press, a journal, and a Canadian poetry resource directory among other archives.

“The Canadian Poetry Press was founded in 1986 for the purposes of publishing scholarly editions of early Canadian long poems. Since then the Press has expanded its mandate to include editions of the work of the Confederation poets and critical studies of Canadian poetry.”

“Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews is a refereed journal devoted to the study of poetry from all periods in Canada. It is published twice yearly, in the Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter…. Its first issue was published in 1977.”

Explore also Canadian Poets:An Annotated List of Resources on the Web, featuring Notable Contemporary Canadian Poets, Confederation Poets, Journals and Literary Databases, compiled and reviewed by Julia C. Obert.

University of Western Ontario, London,  Ontario,  Canada
http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/

“Chatterbook is a 30 minute radio segment that I host and produce on CFRC 101.9 FM which operates out of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Chatterbook’s goal is to provide informative (and inspiring) spoken word programming that focuses on Canadian literature and corollary subjects.”—Rachel

Broadcasts are archived as mp3 podcasts available online.

Queen’s University in Kingston,  Ontario,  Canada
http://www.chatterbook.ca/

“Tucked away on Toronto’s historic bpNichol Lane, Coach House Books has been publishing and printing high-quality innovative fiction and poetry since 1965.”

“From 1997-2002 the Coach House embarked on an ambitious and unprecedented project: to put the contents of our frontlist books online for free. Led by the then Coach House Web Editor and web developer extraordinaire Damian Lopes, we amassed an impressive collection of over 70 unique online books, representing every title we published over that span.”

Toronto, ON,  Ontario,  Canada
http://www.chbooks.com/

“Founded in 1984 after the forced closure of David Thompson University Centre in Nelson, the Kootenay School of Writing relocated to Vancouver to offer inexpensive courses (in writing, editing, and publishing), to sponsor colloquia and critical talks on writing, visual art, and politics, and to host a reading series with local, Canadian, and international writers, and to continue publishing Writing magazine….”

“The Kootenay School of Writing is a response to the failure of most public institutions to serve their artistic communities. It stands in opposition to the concept of ‘cultural industry’ in its recognition that theory, practice, and teaching of writing is best left to working writers….”

KSW Audio: “Hundreds of hours of poetry recordings, going back to the New Poetics Colloquium of 1985, have been added to the site in downloadable mp3.”

Sign up for their email list. See events page.

Vancouver (but it started in Nelson),  British Columbia,  Canada
http://www.kswnet.org/index.cfm

“OneZeroZero was conceived in 1999 as a Coach House Books Millennium Project funded by the Canada Council. It continued in 2002 with assistance from the Federal Department of Industry’s Canada’s Digital Collections. Subsequently it was taken under the wing of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art and will continue to grow.”

“OZZ is an attempt to chart the history of English Canadian small press publishing between 1945 and the present. Its aim is to provide students of Canadian literature with a clear path through the increasingly dense thickets of modern and postmodern writing (mostly poetry) since the end of World War II. It will also essay a sort of cartography of the English Canadian small press, to provide an uncomplicated navigation tool for educators, students and the merely curious through the crowded land- and sea-scapes of unofficial cultural production and non-corporate publishing in English Canada.”

Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art,  Canada
http://www.ccca.ca/history/ozz/index.html

The Ottawa Public Library celebrated its 100 year anniversary in November 2006.

Check out the library’s Digital Audio Catalogue where you can “download popular audio books 24/7 to your PC at home, in the office or from anywhere in the world.” Some poetry classics to be found in the Digital Audio Catalogue if you dig.

Ottawa,  Ontario,  Canada
http://www.biblioottawalibrary.ca/index_e.html

“Poets Against War Canada seeks to engage poets and readers of all kinds in creating a unified public voice against war, tyranny and oppression.”

Post poems in English or French online and participate in online forum.

List to audio-file of interview between poets Jeffrey Mackie (100 Poets against War) and Sandra Stephenson (poetsagainstwar.ca).

Date: ongoing Peace Poetry Jams in various location in Canada and around the world
Canada
http://www.poetsagainstwar.ca/

“Representative Poetry Online, version 3.0, includes 3,162 English poems by 500 poets from Caedmon, in the Old English period, to the work of living poets today. It is based on Representative Poetry, established by Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, University of Toronto, in 1912 (one of the first books published by the University of Toronto Press), and used in the English Department at the University until the late 1960s…. Its electronic founder and editor since 1994 is Ian Lancashire, who is a member of the Department of English, University of Toronto.”

The site also includes an online archive of historical “Prose and Verse Criticism of Poetry”.

University of Toronto, Toronto,  Ontario,  Canada
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm

“The Canadian Literature Archive has been online since October 4, 1994 and is a repository for information about Canadian writers, novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, Canadian literary organizations, magazines, publications, texts and library archives. It is a project of the English Department of the University of Manitoba.”

University of Manitoba, Winnipeg,  Manitoba,  Canada
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/english/canlit/

“Here we hope you’ll find multiple contexts for an enhanced understanding of Earle Birney and his works. We are privileged to display a digital collection of reviews and articles courtesy of the National Library of Canada. In addition, visitors to the site will find a wonderful collection of photographs, sound files, and even typescript drafts of Birney’s ‘makings.’” Maintained by a team at Thompson Rivers University (formerly the University College of the Cariboo) in Kamloops, BC.

Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops,  British Columbia,  Canada
http://www.cariboo.bc.ca/ae/e_birney/home.htm

“Treeline: Canadian Writing on the Net [sought] to promote all forms of Canadian literature and art. It [was] published electronically on a quarterly basis.” Edited by Mark Berge. See online archive for issues spanning 1995 to 1999.

Manitoba,  Canada
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/english/treeline/

“Linking Canada’s Writers with Canada’s Schools…. WIER is:

• An educational initiative that focuses on Canada’s literary culture through creative literary expression and critical discussion undertaken in a writing—and written—community; and,
• An arts initiative that creates new forms of work for Canada’s writers, and audiences for their books.”

The WIER Taps (in PDF) are selections of writings from Writers in Electronic Residence from both Elementary/Intermediate classes and Secondary classes.

Canada
http://www.wier.ca/

“Canadian Poets Online has been researched and programmed by three doctoral candidates in the English Dept. at the University of Calgary. As the project currently stands, this site only addresses Canadian poets and poetry…. It is our hope that, in the future, others will want to expand these initial efforts to include more poets and other genres.”

“Through this electronic project, we have provided an organized guide to the chronological, geographical, and publication histories of selected Twentieth-Century Canadian poets writing in English. Our goal is to provide the public and the University community with an organized pedagogical tool to assist research on the history and contemporary concerns of Canadian poetry written in English. “

English Department at the University of Calgary,  Alberta,  Canada
http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/HUM/ENGL/canada/frames.html

The vehicle of the Kootenay School of Writing from 1980 to 1992. “Its mandate of publishing established poets alongside younger ones - now typical of Canadian literary magazines - brought strong early work by writers associated with the KSW into print alongside that of well-known writers associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group. In this way, _Writing _helped create an international audience for Vancouver writing, and helped assure Vancouver a reputation as an important centre for innovative poetics in the 80s and 90s.”

Select issues are being made available as PDF.

Kootenay School of Writing, Vancouver,  British Columbia,  Canada
http://www.kswnet.org/fire/writingmagazine_ksw.cfm

“Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts by a writer, broadcaster, bibliophile. AUDIO interviews, that will eventually be housed on their own site as part of a comprehensive plan to document ‘the book’ at the turn of the 21st Century, are also housed here.”

“Nigel Beale is the host/producer of The Biblio File, a radio program on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa, Canada that airs weekly at 6am est Monday mornings, and can be heard live around the world at www.ckcufm.com. Audio versions of most interviews conducted for this program can be found on this site.”

bases in Ottawa, Canada and in London, England,  International
http://nigelbeale.com/

“In the present Ubuweb collection of ethnopoetic openings, it’s our intention to build a sampler of what we take to be the second great breakthrough of the modernist poetry project. The search here is for a range of poetries outside the domain of customarily accepted literature. In particular we’re interested, in the spirit of other segments of Ubuweb, in soundings and visionings that are the traditional and often culturally acceptable counterparts to what in our own surroundings have been seen and heard as radical, even disturbing departures from conventional practice. In exploring these we will also be mindful of occasions on which the avant-garde experimental line has merged with or deliberately drawn from other culturally specific traditions.” —Jerome Rothenberg, October 2002

International
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/index.html

“The Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library project (which John Tranter started in 2004 with this prototype Internet site) has been funded with a four-year major Linkage Grant from the Australian Research Council. Professor Elizabeth Webby and Creagh Cole, from the University of Sydney, in association with CAL (the Copyright Agency Limited), will head a team of researchers to build a permanent and wide-ranging library of resources on the Internet….”

“As it grows, the Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library project will provide original texts and basic background information on thousands of Australian poets selected by an advisory committee made up of writers, academic scholars, reviewers, librarians and publishers.”

Other offerings: Bookstores in Australia | Survey Articles Contents (with surveys of Australian poetry scene at various times)

Australia
http://www.austlit.com/a/index.html

“Produced in partnership with Bloodaxe Books, this is a new series of recordings of contemporary poetry. Each two-hour double cassette is a poetry quartet of four poets reading and talking about their work, each with a half-hour selection. This project revives the classic recording archive (now housed in the National Sound Archive) set up by the British Council in the 1960s under Peter Orr in which many leading poets of that time were recorded and released on a series of LPs called The Poet Speaks.” RealAudio and Windows Media Player samples. Audio cassettes and Flash animations.

U.K.
http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-literature-publications-and-resources-poetryquartetshome.htm

“The Poetry Archive is the world’s premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work….

The Poetry Archive exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience. It came into being as a result of a meeting, in a recording studio, between Andrew Motion, soon after he became U.K. Poet Laureate in 1999, and the recording producer, Richard Carrington. They agreed about how enjoyable and illuminating it is to hear poets reading their work and about how regrettable it was that, even in the recent past, many important poets had not been properly recorded.”

U.K.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/

“Poems on the Underground was launched in 1986. The programme was the brainchild of American writer Judith Chernaik, whose aim was to bring poetry to the wide ranging audience of passengers on the Underground…. New sets of poems generally appear three times each year and are displayed in advertising spaces within the trains….
Contemporary and historical poems are included as the programme aims to give a wide variety of choice and style. Works from established and emerging poets from around the world are used.”

“You can listen to a selection of streamed contemporary poems featured on Poems on the Underground read by the authors and editors” on this related site.

London,  U.K. (England)
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/arts/poems/

“The Poetry Cubicle’s founding aims are to explore, interpret, document, preserve and archive ‘poetry’ in its myriad, and hybrid, forms, expressions and states, and to provide access to such artistic expressions through the physical and digital realms to as wide an audience as possible.”

See also The itinerant Poetry Librarian weblog.

Norwich,  U.K. (England)
http://www.thepoetrycubicle.org.uk/indexTPC.html

“The most comprehensive and accessible collection of poetry from 1912 in Britain…. The library contains 90,000 items and is growing all the time.”

The Poetry Library is also home to www.poetrymagazines.org.uk a “free access site to the full-text digital library of 20th and 21st century UK poetry magazines from the Poetry Library collection.”

London,  U.K. (England)
http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/

“The Scottish Poetry Library is the place for poetry in Scotland, for the regular reader, the serious student or the casual browser…. Since its foundation in 1984 it has amassed a remarkable collection of written works, as well as tapes and videos. The emphasis is on contemporary poetry written in Scotland, in Scots, Gaelic and English, but historic Scottish poetry and contemporary works from almost every part of the world feature too.”

Together with Arc, the Scottish Poetry Library has co-hosted the Scotland Canada Exchange:

• www.spl.org.uk/scotland_canada/index.html
• www.arcpoetry.ca/greatscots/

Edinburgh,  U.K. (Scotland)
http://www.spl.org.uk/

“The Library hosts international readings, featuring poets from the Nordic countries, Central and Eastern Europe, France and Germany over the last three years. It also works in partnership with European cultural institutes and with Literature Across Frontiers, to hold in-depth translation workshops and associated public readings.”

U.K. (Scotland)
http://www.spl.org.uk/international/translation.html

“The Celebration of Women Writers recognizes the contributions of women writers throughout history. Women have written almost every imaginable type of work: novels, poems, letters, biographies, travel books, religious commentaries, histories, economic and scientific works…. The Celebration provides a comprehensive listing of links to biographical and bibliographical information about women writers, and complete published books written by women…. A major focus of the Celebration is the development of on-line editions of older, often rare, out-of-copyright works.”

You can browse by name, century, country or ethnicity or use their search form. Check out the list of women writers in Canada.

United States
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/writers.html