Her poetry is both groundbreaking and unforgettable. Now you can enjoy the powerful first works of this poet in The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen, Volume One: The Early Years. These poems show the beginnings of a poetic style that inspired other poets and amazed readers for years. Her poetic voice is in turns playful, melancholy and daring; this is a must-read for all fans of MacEwen and poetry lovers that want an introduction to this important writer.

Her ascent to the top of the literary world is well known. Now you can enjoy the great works of this formidable writer in The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen, Volume Two: The Later Years. Readers will gain a solid understanding of MacEwen's works, as these poems represent her strongest poetic voice, developed from years of writing. Her unique voice is both playful and melancholy, all the while being a daring addition to her genre. This book is a great introduction to the works of MacEwen.

Margaret Atwood presents a selection of poetry by Gwendolyn MacEwen, who first met Atwood in a Toronto coffee shop. MacEwen's poetry is by turns playful, extravagant, melancholy, daring and profound. Her work takes its inspiration from subjects as hard-hitting as the Hiroshima bombing and as humble as the peanut butter sandwich. It springs from a deep involvement with self and world.

"MacEwen described what she set out to achieve as a "sort of powerful poetic mad half-abandoned prose somewhere between [Kenneth] Patchen and Virginia Woolf." Set in a medieval past that has distinctly modern overtones, the novel is about Julian, a young man who believes he is Christ. Wandering the countryside in a horse-drawn wagon, Julian learns "to suspend logic like a whale on a thread." He becomes a master of alchemy, performing "miracles" like curing the mad and changing water into wine. When his rapt audiences begin to lose faith, Julian must pay with his life. MacEwen skillfully implies a relationship between alchemy, miracles and belief, and the art forms she is engaged in herself, poetry and prose. What is the price the writer-magician must pay to engender belief in her audience? Is something true merely because we believe it? With an afterword by the author's sister."--Jacket

There is no doubt Rosemary Sullivan is a biographer of extraordinary talent. Her first biography, By Heart: Elizabeth Smart: A Life was a bestseller and nominated for a Governor General’s Award. Her third biography, The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood, Starting Out, was also a highly acclaimed national bestseller. And her second, Shadow Maker, won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, the Canadian Authors Association Award for Non-Fiction, the City of Toronto Book Award and the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography. Now part of the PerennialCanada library, Shadow Maker reveals the many faces of Gwendolyn MacEwen, the magical and mesmerizing Canadian poet who died suddenly at the age of 46.

The Insomniac Library is proud to reissue Gwendolyn MacEwen's second novel, more than thirty years after its original appearance in 1971. The novel bears important resemblances to MacEwen's earlier Julian the Magician. Writing to poet Al Purdy, MacEwen confessed she wanted her second novel to be ''bulky, readable, and not overly mysterious.'' Unlike in Julian, however, here MacEwen sets out to write a deeply serious novel that also functions as entertaining historical fiction. The novel's hero is Akhenaton, Pharaoh of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, who was the first ruler to introduce the idea of monotheism. As Rosemary Sullivan remarks in her biography of MacEwen, he was, like Julian, ''one more human being filled with the god-lust.'' Akhenaton's single-mindedness in his quest for his own brand of reason is a powerfully paradoxical distillation of the artistic temperament: originality, fertility and beauty set against death and despair and an inability to love.

The T.E. Lawrence Poems is Gwendolyn MacEwen's most integrated, complete and respected work. It is now recognized as her signature poetic achievement."In 1962, I was staying in a hotel in Tiberias, Israel; the tall, white-haired proprietor invited me downstairs one evening and served me syrupy tea and a plate of fruit. He showed me a series of old sepiatone photographs which lined the walls - photographs of blurred riders on camels riding to the left into some uncharted desert just beyond the door. Some of them were signed.'It's Lawrence isn't it?' I asked, walking up to one.'Yes, ' said my host, offering me a huge section of an orange. 'I rode with him once a long time ago. I see you always carry a pen and paper to write things down. I thought you'd be interested; I thought you'd like to know.'These poems were written some twenty years later."

Elements of history and the poems explore the many complexities of a lifetime defined by hardship and intense emotion that was influenced by the invasion of Poland, World War II, refuge, displacement, and loss.