One of
Canada's more internationally-renowned gifts to contemporary English-language
poetry, Sharon Thesen's poems are highly-anthologized while in the academic world she is better-known
(better-yet-known, perhaps) in her analysis and application of
feminist theory to contemporary
literary criticism in essays such as
Poetry and the Dilemma of Expression in collections such as
A Mazing Space: Writing Canadian Women Writing.
Beyond her prolific and prodigious poetic output she is appearing increasingly in the role of curator or editor,
co-editing Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff, A Modern Correspondence with scholar Ralph Maud and overseeing the project that was The New Long Poem Anthology - an appropriate task for her as one of the few consistent and contemporary composers in the "long poem" (think somewhere between Howl and The Odyssey in length) genre.
More regular editorial work for her manifests in the (sometimes-)quarterly releases of the venerable CanLit magazine The Capilano Review - fitting as, despite a stint in 1992 as Writer-in-Residence in Montreal's Concordia University, she has become a nigh-permanent fixture in tenure at Capilano College in North Vancouver, teaching modern poetry and creative writing to otherwise-uncultured yobs (such as myself - but I'm better now).
As of the date of this write-up's composition, her published volumes of poetry are as follows:
A couple of her poems I've, gulp, illegally reprinted here (looks shiftily from side to side for fear of seeing his former teacher or worse - her lawyers) include Japanese Movies 2 and Getting On With It.