The Great Black North has won TWO Alberta Book Awards: The Education Book Award and The Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. The jurors said

“The Great Black North is both enlightening and entertaining. Like our vast and cosmopolite country, this book’s strength is its diversity.”

“The publication is a major cultural achievement….it uniquely defines a piece of Canadian culture and history in a completely new way. It will be remembered and cited for many years to come, as it gives voice and visibility to an entire community.”

“Combining delight and purpose in powerful ways, these poets open a doorway into a particular national experience that needs to be shared with a wide audience.”

Here are a few more comments on the book:

“National in identity and universal in scope. Not since 1976, when Harold Head published Canada in Us Now, has there been such a definitive assemblage of black voices telling their own stories through poetry.” – Quill & Quire

“It’s significant, it’s important, it was overdue.” – Shelagh Rogers, CBC, The Next Chapter

The Great Black North: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry

Introduction by George Elliott Clarke
Preface by Karina Vernon