Confederation Poets - History

History

The Confederation Poets were the first Canadian writers to become widely known after Confederation in 1867.

Charles G. D. Roberts (recognized in his lifetime as "the father of Canadian poetry") led the group, which had two main branches: One, in Ottawa, consisted of the poets Archibald Lampman, Duncan Campbell Scott, and William Wilfred Campbell. The other were Maritime poets, including Roberts and his cousin, Bliss Carman. The four major poets in the group were Roberts, Carman, Lampman and Scott, with Lampman "most often regarded as the finest poet" in the group, according to the Twentieth-Century Literary Movements Dictionary.

The group, which thrived from the 1890s to the 1920s, generally paid attention to classical forms and subjects, but also realistic description, some exploration of innovative technique and, in subject matter, an examination of the individual's relationships both to the natural world and modern civilization.

None of the above poets ever used the term "Confederation Poets", or any other term, for themselves as a distinct group. Nothing indicates that any of them considered themselves a group. In fact, they "were in no way a cohesive group." As a group, the "Confederation Poets" were formed by a retroactive process of canonization: "Malcolm Ross's retrospective application of the term ‘Confederation poets’ is a good example of canon-making along national lines.

Despite the fact there never was such a group historically, there may be good reasons to treat the Confederation Poets as a distinct group in hindsight. First of all, "Roberts, Lampman, Carman, and Scott were among the first really good poets writing in the recently formed Dominion of Canada". For that matter, they were writing the first really good poetry ever written in the geographic area of the new country. As "Confederation Poet" Archibald Lampman said about encountering "Confederation Poet" Charles G.D. Roberts's work:

One May evening somebody lent me Orion and Other Poems, then recently published. Like most of the young fellows about me I had been under the depressing conviction that we were situated hopelessly on the outskirts of civilization, where no art and no literature could be, and that it was useless to expect that anything great could be done by any of our companions, still more useless to expect that we could do it ourselves. I sat up all night reading and rereading Orion in a state of the wildest excitement and when I went to bed I could not sleep.

In addition: "There are several good reasons, both biographical and literary, for grouping them together. All were close contemporaries born in the early 1860s. Roberts and Carman were cousins; Roberts briefly edited Goldwin Smith's Toronto literary magazine The Week, in which Carman published his first poem." Lampman also published in the Week, and he and Roberts became friends by mail. In the early 1890s, when Carman worked on the editorial staffs of The Independent and The Chapbook, and other American magazines, he published poems by the other three.