A rhythm to stand beside is a varied collection, ranging from extended experiments in language ("A brush through a mathematical selection of G"), to a kind of magical lyricism in poems invoking luck and inspiration; from a rambling, cumulatively hilarious ode to Ontario, to poems of plain but searching emotional statement. Hannan has been working informally with a group of contemporary dancers, looking at ways to write poetry to accompany performances; he explores the idea in poems that form a thread running through this book.

Jack Hannan has been a hotwalker, a typesetter for Fred Louder, a bookseller, and a publisher. He is a novelist and poet who lives in Montreal, Canada, not far from the house where he was born. His first book was published in 1977, and his first novel, The Poet is a Radio, was published in 2016. His work has been shortlisted for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. His family knows he is either at home or will be back soon.

Jack Hannan's profile page

"In ‘Out where the anthropologists roam’ the narrator imagines himself an old man emptying his pockets ‘on a street corner, the years in/ little heaps on the sidewalk’ which people deliberately sidestep. They would do well to explore them, as would any reader of Hannan’s poetry. Read this book."

The New Quarterly