Other Names for the Heart

Although he was born in Yokohama, Japan, was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and has lived and taught in Burma and Texas, David Wevill has remained steadfastly Canadian both in nationality and outlook. During the late Fifties and early Sixties he played a major role in “The Group” — a workshop and anthology — with such notable figures as George MacBeth, Peter Porter, Peter Redgrove, Alan Brownjohn, Zulfikar Ghose, Adrian Mitchell, Philip Hobsbaum and Edward Lucie-Smith, Wevill was also the only Canadian to be included in A. Alvarez’ landmark anthology , The New Poetry (1965).

Wevill has attempted to bring to his work the best of many different poetries: the terseness of Spanish language poets such as Lorca, Neruda, Machado and Paz; the meditative depth and strength of spirit found in Central and East European verse; the violent, often surreal perceptions of his British contemporaries; and the sharp, vibrant images that span the gap between life and death that link him to the essential canon of Canadian poetry.

In 1966, the Governor General’s Award Committee selected Margaret Atwood’s The Circle Game as the poetry prize winner. That decision marked the beginning of a decade or more of an almost pro-national emphasis in Canadian verse, an era in which influences from abroad became markedly noticeable. The other major contender for the 1966 prize was David Wevill’s A Christ of the Ice-Floes. Now, with Other Names for the Heart, Wevill takes his rightful place among the best of Canada’s poets, helping to usher our poetry into the continuum of world literature.