Opening the Island

Winner of the 2003 Atlantic Poetry Prize

Opening the Island is the highly anticipated first book of poetry by one of Canada's most lyrical voices. Always critical, often iconographic, Anne Compton plumbs the classic themes of life, art, love, and home which are masterfully reshaped into a contemporary landscape rich in colour and folds of metaphor.

The result is a rhythm of expression, a texture and critique that weave through the day-to-day, yet strike toward the transcendental.

Anne Compton was awarded the 2005 Governor General's Award for Poetry for Processional, which also won the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Opening the Island won the 2003 Atlantic Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. She is the author of A.J.M. Smith: Canadian Metaphysical, editor of The Edge of Home: Milton Acorn from the Island, and co-editor of Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. She teaches at the University of New Brunswick.