Introduction

The Canadian Poetry Archive features selected poems from over 100 early English- and French-language Canadian poets. Digitized from public domain anthologies found in the National Library of Canada's rich literature collection, the poems represent some of Canada's most notable poetry from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Canadian Poetry Archive database is searchable by poet, title, keywords and date. Author, title and date indexes can also be browsed.

Biographies of some of the more prominent poets in the database have also been provided. Each biography includes photographs, biographical text, a selective bibliography, a link to the poet's poems in the Archive, and a link to search the poet's name in the National Library of Canada's online catalogue, AMICUS Web.

The Archive was developed in the course of a metadata testbed project (Dublin Core and RDF), conducted in 1999 by the National Library of Canada's Information Analysis and Standards Division in cooperation with the Canadian Literature Research Service.

As the Canadian Poetry Archive grows and evolves, so to will appreciation and awareness of Canada's extraordinary poetic achievements.