This collection of poetry honours the small stories about Old Man, who has lived a real life as an uncommon character. His life and its diverse tales are sensate, enticing the reader into Old Man’s individual and mythical being. Old Man as Cree/white soldier, biologist, father, son and lover releases these stories into the realm of legend. As such, he assumes the extraordinary character of Old Man, the trickster and creator of native lore. He is mythic, enigmatic, and symbolic in his power to evoke energy in his stories. These stories are set in wartime Europe and post-WWII Saskatchewan. The Canadian landscape allows Old Man the setting of freedom to talk and reminisce. In old age, he begins to make sense of his life, as he shimmies between his boundaries of white and native ways of knowing. The narrator and collector of these stories is Lover, who provides a quality of resonance in her intellectual and emotional reflections of Old Man. Lover relates Old Man’s stories through a connection of simultaneous distance and intimacy; tenderness and violence, eroticism and earthiness.

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Micheline Maylor is a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Calgary (2016-18) and was the Calgary Public Library Author in Residence in fall 2016. She teaches creative writing at Mount Royal University. Her most recent book Little Wildheart (UAlberta Press) was long-listed for both the Pat Lowther and Raymond Souster awards. Find her online at www.michelinemaylor.com.

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