Awards and Honours:
Canadian Authors' Association Award
Governor General's Award Finalist
Trillium Award Finalist
“What I learned then sustains me
through every sorrow:
it’s the believer who keeps looking for proof.”
Alternating the experiences of historical figures with individual lives, Miner's Pond is a dialogue on the human condition which persists across time, location and identity. Anne Michaels takes daring leaps with the architecture of her longer poems, and reveals expert control in her ability to hold together diverse images, shifting times, and conflicting voices. At times deeply personal, these haunting poems are melodious and sensuously visionary.
Praise for Miner's Pond:
"Michaels' obvious brilliance, her total eclipse of most of her contemporaries (in both style and substance, if you want to try to split that hair), makes her a target for superlatives. If she never writes another word, Anne Michaels is one of the finest poets this country has ever produced." - Vancouver Sun
"... a collection with all the strengths of her fine first book, The Weight of Oranges, but in even greater doses. Her skill, it seems to me, is in her almost supernatural sense of balance: between assurance and the precision of her technique on the one hand and, on the other, the humanity of the voice beneath; between accessibility and privacy, tension and narrative, meditation and description, instinct and intellect." - The Kingston Whig-Standard
“Her poems are about artists from the past (Modigliani and Isak Dinesen, for instance); but the voice behind them has a tough, sensuous resonance that is all Michaels's own. Her images linger on my tongue: 'Our blood is time.' The Toronto literati are giving her high praise; and for once, they're right.” - The Gazette
"Miner’s Pond will repay many rereadings, offering emotional and metaphysical sustenance to those willing to take the time to engage their burnished mysteries.” - Toronto Star
“… [the] title poem is remarkably controlled as it presents a series of images that evoke a deep emotion beneath the still surface of memory.” - Globe and Mail
“Miner’s Pond is a loosely-woven cloak of images which gently envelop, gently cradle the reader into understanding … The rhythm, colour, texture, taste of words as they meld one into another is like the beginning of a romance … The sensuality in Michaels’ work will seduce.” - Calgary Herald
"The singular pathos of her poems is persuasive ... She inspects her inner experience with rigorously precise tones and details. Never forced or pretentious, Michaels's balanced vision informs and refreshes." - Ottawa Citizen
"Miner's Pond continues to reveal Michaels's gifts with rhythm and expands further on the longer, meditative aspects of her writing." - The Edmonton Journal