Much-loved, cantankerous, and brilliant, Al Purdy galloped across the Canadian literary landscape for decades, grandly embodying the self-taught and hard-living image of the 1960s and '70s poet. "The More Easily Kept Illusions: The Poetry of Al Purdy" is a selection of thirty-five poems that includes some of his best-loved and unearths lost and ignored treasures.

Robert Budde introduces the collection with an overview of Purdy's tumultuous life of letters, his legendary personality, his outrageous antics, his peers, his influences, and the history of his publishing career. Reorganizing Purdy's body of work, this collection also re-interprets the chronological and thematic development of his writing. Choosing poems for a book like this is necessarily an act of literary criticism and Budde takes care to balance the various critical attentions that have structured the historical responses to Purdy's work. The selected poems will mix lesser-known gems with Purdy's greatest hits. Teachers, poetry-lovers, students, and writers will rediscover Purdy's unique voice. Those who are new to his work will get a full and rich sense of the man some have called the last Canadian poet.

Also includes an Afterword by Russell Morton Brown.

In a time when darkness covered the land, a boy named Weget is born who is destined to bring the light. With the gift of a raven's skin that allows him to fly as well as transform, Weget turns into a bird and journeys from Haida Gwaii into the sky. There he finds the Chief of the Heavens who keeps the light in a box. By transforming himself into a pine needle, clever Weget tricks the Chief and escapes with the daylight back down to Earth.
Vividly portrayed through the art of Roy Henry Vickers, Weget's story has been passed down for generations. The tale has been traced back at least 3,000 years by archeologists who have found images of Weget's journey in petroglyphs on the Nass and Skeena rivers. This version of the story originates from one told to the author by Chester Bolton, Chief of the Ravens, from the village of Kitkatla around 1975.

One day in 1897, as the huge carnival big-top swooshed upward, a child came flying out of the folds of the tent and landed softly in the straw on the ground. This is Slip's story, and skilfully illustrates the curiosity towards the human condition that exists today as it did at the height of the turn-of-the-century freak-show.

"In Muddy Water: Conversations with 11 Poets" documents the connections and diversity of poetry coming out of an eclectic group of Canadian poets. These poets range from established to emerging, traditional to experimental, and the dialogue created between them charts an expanse of themes and styles available to poetry readers. Robert Kroetsch comments on the poetic: "We live in Muddy Water as opposed to Clear Water. There is something there, but you only get signals, you see a ripple." Poetry is a record of contemporary language and, as such, provides a map of contemporary life; a torn and muddied map, but a map nonetheless. "Muddy Water: Conversations with 11 Poets" includes interviews with Robert Kroetsch, Dawne McCance, Catherine Hunter, Duncan Mercredi, George Amabile, Patrick Friesen, Todd Bruce, Melanie Cameron, Dennis Cooley, Jon Paul Fiorentino, and Mira Cook.