'Why don't you write about Canada': Olive Senior's poetry, everybody's history, and the 'condition of resonance'

In “’Why don’t you write about Canada?’: Olive Senior’s Poetry, Everybody’s History and the ‘Condition of Resonance’,” Anne Collett approaches the tensely nationalist query of her title from a very different perspective: seeing Canada as a “present absence” in Senior’s poetry about the Caribbean. This present absence is a means of reminding Canadians about the historical entanglements of Canada and the Caribbean. The resulting vision of Senior’s poetry is one that produces the nation in the world, and that reminds readers that so-called “developed” nations like Canada have been produced as such through the systematic exploitation of other nations.