Anne Compton, BA, MA, PhD, (poet, academic, professor, editor, and arts organizer) received an O’Brien Foundation Fellowship in 1986 to pursue Doctoral Studies in Canadian Literature at the University of New Brunswick.
Anne received a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and history at the Prince of Wales College (now the University of Prince Edward Island) and a Master of Arts degree in Canadian and American literature at York University. She completed her PhD at the University of New Brunswick in 1988. Her PhD thesis which focused on the Canadian poet A.J.M. Smith, was later published by ECW Press as A.J.M. Smith: Canadian Metaphysical (1994).
In 1998, Anne became director of the Lorenzo Reading Series at the University of New Brunswick Saint John (UNBSJ), a highly reputable university reading series (“Compton”). She was later appointed writer-in-residence at UNBSJ. She also taught several courses for the English department.
During her time at UNBSJ, Anne published the following works: Opening the Island (2002), Processional (2005), and Meetings with Maritime Poets: Interviews (2006). She also took on an editorial role with The Edge of Home: Milton Acorn from the Island (2002), as well as Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada (2002). Over the course of her career, Compton has won two Atlantic Poetry Prizes (2003 and 2006), the Governor General’s Award (2005), several Excellence in Teaching Awards, the National Magazine Award (2008), and the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Literary Arts (2008) (“Dr. Anne Compton”). Anne also published a work of poetry Asking Questions Indoors and Out (2009). Along with her critical articles and scholarship on Atlantic and New Brunswick literature, Anne’s work at UNBSJ represents her most significant contribution to the province. In the thirteen years she has spent with the Lorenzo Reading Series, she has “introduced New Brunswick readers to hundreds of Canadian books over the years” She has also worked with “a number of beginning and emerging writers,” one of whom, in gratitude, established The Dr. Anne Compton Writing Prize in Poetry. Anne currently resides in Rothesay, New Brunswick.
Mikila Gallant, "Anne Compton." The New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia.
Ed. Tony Tremblay. Fredericton: New Brunswick Studies Centre, 2010.
Bibliography of Primary Sources
Books
Compton, Anne. A.J.M. Smith: Canadian Metaphysical. Montreal: ECW Press, 1994.
---. Asking Questions Indoors and Out. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2009.
---. Opening the Island. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2002.
---. Processional. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2005.
---, ed. The Edge of Home: Milton Acorn from the Island. Charlottetown, PEI: Island Studies, 2002.
---, ed. Meetings with Maritime Poets: Interviews. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2006.
---, et al., eds. Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2002.
Scholarly Articles
Compton, Anne. "'After the Ebb-Flow': A.J.M. Smith's Nature Poetry." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature Canadienne 14.1 (1989): 54-72.
---. "As If I Really Mattered: The Narrator of Sinclair Ross's As for Me and My House." Studies in Canadian Literature 17.1 (1992): 62-77.
---. "Ascension: Liliane Welch Talks about Poetry." Canadian Literature 166 (2000): 127-41.
---. "Doubly-Crossing Syllables: Thomas O'Grady on Poetry, Exile, and Ireland." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature Canadienne 26.1 (Fall 2001): 145-71.
---. "In Iron John's Sloshy Swamp, There is a Bitterly Cold Undercurrent." Dalhousie Review 72.2 (Summer 1992): 273-82.
---. "A 'Little World' in Decadence: Majorie Pickthall's Poems on Nature and on Religion." Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 43 (Fall/Winter 1998): 10-43.
---. "‘A Many-Veined Leaf': Minutiae and Multiplicity in Brian Bartlett's Poetry." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature Canadienne 28.2 (Winter 2004): 131-51.
---. "Meditations on the House: The Poetics of Space in Jane Urquhart's Changing Heaven and The Whirlpool." Canadian Literature 150 (Autumn 1996): 10-21.
---. "Patterns for Poetry: Poetics in Seven Poems by A.J.M. Smith." Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 28 (Spring/Summer 1991): 1-17.
---. "Physics and Poetry: The Complex World of Alan Wilson." Canadian Literature 170/171 (Autumn/Winter 2001): 91-107.
---. "The Poet Impressionist: Some Landscapes by Archibald Lampman." Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 34 (Spring/Summer 1994): 33-56.
---. "Poetry, Photography, Painting: Stephanie Bolster's World." Studies in Canadian Literature 24.2 (March 2000): 186-97.
---. “Romancing the Landscape: Jane Urquhart's Fiction." In Jane Urquhart: Essays on Her Work. Ed. Laura Ferri. Toronto: Guernica. 2005.
---. "Standing Your Ground: George Elliott Clarke in Conversation." Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en Littérature Canadienne 23.2 (1998): 138-64.
---. "The Theatre of the Body: Extreme States in Elisabeth Harvor's Poetry." Canadian Literature 183 (2004): 13-27.
---. "W.W.E. Ross's Imagism and the Poetics of the Early Twentieth Century." Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 39 (1996): 49-79.
Bibliography of Secondary Sources
Campbell, Wanda. “‘Every Sea-Surrounded Hour’: The Margin in Maritime Poetry.” Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature Canadienne 33.2 (2008): 151-70.
Carey, Barbara. “You May Have to Return to Get the Grammar of the Ground: Both Anne Compton and Ronna Bloom Manage that Difficult Art of Combining Directness with Subtlety Proof that Plainspeaking Can Soar in its Own Way.” Toronto Star 23 Aug. 2009: 7.
Compton, Anne. Email interview. October 2011.
“Compton, Anne.” The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Ed. William Toye. 2nd ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford UP, 2011. 119-20.
Donaldson, Jeffery. “Strolls with Anne Compton’s Processional.” Antigonish Review 155 (2008): 125-34.
“Dr. Anne Compton.” UNB Faculty of Arts. University of New Brunswick, n.d. <http://www.unb.ca/saintjohn/arts/depts/humlang/people/compton.html>.
Greene, Richard. “I Showed You My Tattoo.” Rev. of Meetings with Maritime Poets: Interviews, ed. Anne Compton. Books in Canada 36.5 (2007): 32-3.
Hickey, David. “The Longevity of Love.” Rev. of Processional, by Anne Compton. Books in Canada 35.1 (2006): 29-30.
L'Abbé, Sonnet. Rev. of Opening the Island, by Anne Compton. Canadian Literature 176 (2003): 137-9.
Langille, Carole. Rev. of Opening the Island, by Anne Compton. The Antigonish Review 135 (2003): 121.
MacLaine, Brent. “The Poet in the Landscape is Made by the Landscape.” Essays on Canadian Writing 79 (2003): 83-93.
MacLeod, Sue. "At the Edge of Sky and Water: Two New Brunswick Poets Invite us Inside Their Worlds." Atlantic Books Today 48 (2005): n.p.
Neilson, Shane. Rev. of Opening the Island, by Anne Compton. Books in Canada 32.5 (2003): 47.
“Poets in Profile: Anne Compton.” Interview. Open Book. Open Book Toronto, 4 Apr. 2011 <http://openbooktoronto.com/news/poets_profile_anne_compton>.