Poetry of Place

the necessity

or inevitableness

of verse

The critic T E Hulme argued in 1908 that the aim of the modern poet is “to fix an impression”. In his own case, he said, “the first time I ever felt the necessity or inevitableness of verse, was in the desire to reproduce the peculiar quality of feeling which is induced by the flat spaces and wide horizons of the virgin prairie of western Canada”.