In Beautiful Razor, Al Hunter explores the span between the sensual and the profane; the distance of which can sometimes be vast or on the razor's edge. This much-awaited collection is the third poetry book written by the former Rainy River First Nations Chief, along with Spirit Horses and The Recklessness of Love.

AL HUNTER is from Rainy River First Nations, Manitou Rapids, Ontario. He is a proud member of the Caribou clan whose roles and responsibilities include reconciliation, peacemaking, and the preservation of artistic, creative traditions of the Anishinaabeg. His work has appeared most recently in This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades; W’daub Awe: Speaking True; McGraw-Hill Ryerson’s iLit: Stories of Struggle and Strength from First Natioins, Inuit, and Metis Peoples in Canada. He is a spoken word performer and the author of three books of poetry, Spirit Horses and The Recklessness of Love. Beautiful Razor: Love Poems & Other Lies is his third book. All are published by Kegedonce Press.

Al Hunter's profile page

"In this fluid collection we enter a galactic expanse where absence, distance and fire repel and attract lovebodies in a winged-whirl of magnetic mad flight. Loss, emptiness, space, desire, blood, memory; all devour themselves in the combustions of love without self. The you/other may be interchangeable, never static or frozen or attainable. In these sharp-beaked bird-worlds there is 'no going back' - at best, bodies meet only 'flame to flame,' mutable and razor-like in feathery, impermanent forms. I find Hunter's new work a rare melding of Blues, Kabbalah and personal transcendence - a piercing, hard-won angelic love mantra. A blazing tour de force!"
-- Juan Felipe Herrera (California Poet Laureate).

"What lies here are the vagaries of a heart wounded, shattered, and redeemed by love. Such generosity of spirit deserves acclaim. A bravura work." - Richard Wagamese (author of Indian Horse)