SOURCE: "Avison's Imitation of Christ the Artist," in Canadian Literature, No. 54, Autumn, 1972, pp. 56-69.

Bowering is a Canadian poet, novelist, short story writer, and critic. In the following essay, he discusses theme and the image of Christ and the artist presented in Avison's poetry.

In a review article about The Dumbfounding (in Canadian Literature 38), Lawrence M. Jones makes reference to an unpublished essay that Margaret Avison composed about her relationship with Christ and its effect upon her work. Looking back on her early poetry, she announces "how grievously I cut off his way by honouring the artist" during her "long wilful detour into darkness". Readers of Miss Avison's work will know that such a confession does not lead to her abandoning poetic care and plunging into artless canticles of devotional verse. She is not compulsively looking for security, as Germaine Greer would put it. Of all our poets...