SOURCE: Helwig, David. Review of The Creative Writer. Queen's Quarterly 73, no. 4 (winter 1966): 612-13.

In the following review, Helwig discusses a collection of Birney's essays about poetry and creative writing that were originally conceived as programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In the seven essays (originally seven broadcasts) in this book [The Creative Writer], one of Canada's best poets tries to express for a wide public, the importance of the creative writer, with an accent on both words. His answers to the theoretical questions that come up are usually those of common sense or tradition but are informed with the passion of a man who loves poetry and believes in it.

The most important theme of the book is the relationship between the poet with his daimon “that drives from within,” and his society, which is necessary, as his audience, hostile, as his censor, and stimulating, as a sick...