“For literature now is in a dangerous zone where there seems to be little separation between the private act of writing and the public performance demanded of writers. Books are judged today as successful or not depending on sales and jury short lists. Meanwhile the critical climate, for all the media coverage of writers, is random and manic. Writers are either flung onto centre stage or ignored completely. New talents are discovered (this being the main and perhaps only virtue of any award system) but many significant artists such as Robin Blaser or Roy Kiyooka or Al Pittman can go through their whole careers being barely mentioned in the national newspapers. The best critics of our time, who are less obsessed with the frantic picking of a season’s winner, are published quietly and almost invisibly. Critical works such as George Bowering’s Errata or The Mask In Place, Robert Kroetsch’s The Lovely Treachery Of Words, Dennis Lee’s Body Music, or Don McKay’s Vis à Vis prove there are writers who can calmly separate the wheat from the chaff, who can write about what is truly valuable in our literature.” — Michael Ondaatje, The Star