No Canadian poet, not even P. K. Page, has focused as steadily as Florence McNeil on the intersection of the visual and verbal. In the anthology New West Coast (1977) she wrote: "I've always been interested in the differences: representation of the thing and the thing itself and the various shades of truth in what is perceived. So I use movies, photographs, television, paintings as source material." This interest in thing and representation of thing is realized in poetry which consistently combines graphic precision and fine verbal shading.

The storytelling tradition which McNeil's father shared with his Outer Hebridean ancestors provided a childhood which McNeil remembers as rich with vivid verbal pictures. Born to John and Jean Gillies McNeil, and raised in North Burnaby, close to ocean, forest, and mountain, McNeil studied at the University of British Columbia, receiving a B.A. in 1960. She spent the next year at...