Great Silent Ballad, beloved lyric poet A.F. Moritz's twenty-second volume of poetry, in visionary terms forwards the assertion that poetry, a primordial reality, is in the current moment both the equal of, and the antidote to, the rest of present-day civilization and its suicidal nature.

The book unfolds in seven short sections that probe such topics as the crucial value of childhood; a human person's development through maturity and age; the perennially avant-garde nature of great poetry no matter what time and place; and poetry's inherent involvement with hope and creativity, life and feeling, freedom and love. Great Silent Ballad also reprises Moritz's longstanding celebration of common human conversation, the apex of which (he argues convincingly) is what we call "poetry"—meaning not just the art of verse, but our total access to the goodness of natural existence. (From House of Anansi Press)

Moritz is the author of 20 poetry collections, including The Garden, As Far As You Know and The Sparrow: Selected Poems. For over a decade he has been the Goldring Professor of the Arts and Society at Victoria University at the University of Toronto, where he continues to teach creative writing. He served as the sixth poet laureate for the City of Toronto from March 2019 to May 2023.

He was a three-time finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry: for Rest on the Flight into Egypt in 1999, The Sentinel in 2008 and The New Measures in 2012. As Far As You Know was a finalist for the 2020 Ontario Trillium Award. The Sentinel was also the winner of the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Other honours Moritz has received include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship and the Award in Literature of American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.