Heather Spears
editor & artist

This long awaited and unique anthology of Canadian poetry offers a glimpse of poets in action through the expressive drawings of poet/artist Heather Spears. Fifty of Canada’s most revered contemporary poets contemplate the subject of ‘line’ – lines of poetry, landscape or art – each poem accompanied by a pencil portrait of a moment of performance during a literary event. Heather Spears’ line drawings have an active, kinetic quality –– highly gestural, the lines move and merge with the lines of poetry on the page. The reader has the sense of being present in the audience, as a succession of poets take the stage. Line by Line is an important chronicle of Canadian literature and literary figures of our day.

Heather Spears has twice won the Pat Lowther Award and The Governor-General's Award for Poetry. A resident of Denmark, she travels widely and draws constantly, and has held over 75 solo exhibitions. Her swift and precise line has been called “meticulous and...exquisite.” Line by Line contains a timely selection of drawings of one of her favourite subjects: Canadian poets.

Includes poetry by and drawings of:

Margaret Atwood
Joe Blades
George Bowering
Mick Burrs
Jocko
Sarah Klassen
Lionel Kearns
Pat Lane
Christopher Levenson
Daniel David Moses
Jay MacPherson
Colin Morton
Roger Nash
John Oughton
P.K. Page
James Reaney
Ajmer Rode
Stan Rogal
Linda Rogers
Joe Rosenblatt
Jay Ruzesky
Stephen Scobie
Joseph Sherman
Glen Sorestad
Heather Spears
Phil Thompson
Peter Trower
Patricia Young
Terence Young
Phyllis Webb
and many others