Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground

Born in 1899 in Quebec City, Francis Reginald (Frank) Scott was a public poet, an accomplished editor and mentor of a generation of writers, an influential professor of constitutional law, and a founding member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Emerging as one of the ""Montreal Group"" of modernist poets of the 1920s, Scott spent the next five decades writing poetry and working to transform both Canadian poetics and politics. With a penchant for satire, Scott's work is sometimes playful and witty and sometimes gravely concerned with the legacies of political ineptitude and the fragility of both humanity and the environment. Laura Moss is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia and the former director of the UBC International Canadian Studies Centre. She is the associate editor of the journal Canadian Literature, co-editor (with Cynthia Sugars) of the two volume Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts (2008, 2009), and the editor of Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature (WLU Press, 2003). George Elliott Clarke is the inaugural E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. Named a Trudeau Foundation Fellow in 2005, Clarke is a revered poet, librettist, and novelist. For his collection Execution Poems, he received the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 2001. His bestselling poetry-novel, Whylah Falls, is a major text in Canadian literature.

• Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground: The Poetry of F.R. Scott, selected with an introduction by Laura MossForeword Neil BesnerBiographical NoteIntroduction Laura MossOverture Laurentian ShieldCoelacanthOrangerieMy Amoeba Is UnawareMural LakeshoreA Grain of RiceIncident at May Pond Miranda Trans CanadaTo Certain FriendsSocial Notes I, 1932Social Notes II, 1935Lest We ForgetFor R.A.S. 1925-1943W.L.M.K.The Canadian Social RegisterThe Canadian Authors MeetBonne EntenteBrébeuf and His BrethrenAll the Spikes But the LastSaturday SundaeMartinigramA Lass in WonderlandPicture in ""Life"" On Kanbawza RoadOn the Death of GandhiFor Bryan PriestmanLast Rites Ushering in the Quiet Revolution Audacity Fort SmithA New City: E3 On Saying Goodbye to My Room in Chancellor Day HallVillanelle for Our Time Afterword: Reading ""Canon"" Scott's Canon George Elliot ClarkeAcknowledgements

``Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground is a fine pick for any world poetry collection, much recommended.'' -- Midwest Bookwatch, The Poetry Shelf, December 2011, 201201