Wonderful to read Chris Jennings' appreciative review of Sailing to Babylon in issue 70 of Arc Poetry Magazine. ​He writes, "in Sailing to Babylon, the formalism—the regular stanza patterns, sonnets, and the long poem in terza rima—prepares you to think about the fine line between an advanced knowledge of the rules of traditional poetic form and a mastery of the subtleties of traditional poetics. When a poet deploys tradition gracefully, as James Pollock has, the pleasure in the poems also renews my affection for tradition." A warm thank you to Chris!

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be editing, and writing an introduction for, The Essential Daryl Hine, a volume of selected poems in the Essential Poets Series published by The Porcupine's Quill. The book is scheduled to appear in 2014. For information about Hine, see an earlier blog post on this site, announcing his recent death.

In this interview, I name the desire behind You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, and discuss the relationship between poetry and criticism for the poet-critic, among other things.

What a joy to read at the Governor General's Award finalists' reading at the Atwater Library in Montreal, Canada, on November 1, 2012. The event was part of the Atwater Poetry Project reading series. It was a wonderful evening, not least because I felt so welcomed by so many fellow poets. To listen, click here.

What a pleasure to read critic Michael Lista's appreciative review of Sailing to Babylon in the National Post, a major newspaper in Canada. In this first response to the book in print, Lista considers "the enduring beauty of [the long poem] 'Quarry Park,' and of Sailing to Babylon as a whole." My warm thanks to Michael!