Irrealities, Sonnets & Laconics

The poetry of William Wrightson Eustace (W.W.E.) Ross spans over forty years. He married the well-known journalist, Mary Lowrey Ross, and died in Toronto in 1966. Ross’s work was published in The Dial – he was one of the few poets whose poems the editor, Marianne Moore, did not attempt to rewrite – but during his lifetime he published only three privately printed books.

He left behind not only a great mass of unpublished manuscripts, but a reputation as the first modern Canadian poet, a reputation confirmed by the publication of Shapes and Sounds: The Poetry of W.W.E. Ross in 1966. That book, fine as it was, focused on Ross the Imagist only, but he was also the first surrealist (or Irrealist, as he liked to speak of it) – years ahead of the Automatistes in Quebec – a translator, and a sonneteer of formal excellence. Through him, modernist poetry in Canada must now be looked at with an entirely fresh eye.

Edited with an Introduction by Barry Callaghan.

Exile Classics Series, Number 21.

Poetry • 5.5 x 8.5 • PB 248 pages • 9781550962284