*Winner 2013 J.M. Abraham Poetry Award *Finalist 2013 Governor General's Award for Poetry

From a master poet, meditative lines running like veins through the dark grace of being alive.

Governor General's Award-winning poet Don Domanski's new collection, Bite Down Little Whisper, delves into the interconnectedness of all life with spiritual gravitas and powerful mindfulness. These are poems brimming with mythological and scientific energies, with a multi-dimensionality that opens itself to both complexity and clarity. Domanski shows us seams and fastenings that unite our longings with the earth itself, with the nonhuman vitality that surrounds us. The heart's need for unity and reverence is present in these poems as a whisper we hear in occasional moments of quietude, when it's possible to perceive the workings of a larger existence.

Quietude is called returning to life Lao Tze says
even on a Tuesday afternoon in Nova Scotia
even with the hood ornaments of chocolate irises
gleaming outward from their arterial darkness
with the unborn standing high up in the trees
like cemetery angels
one finger pointing to heaven the other to earth
— from "Ars Magica"

Don Domanski was born and raised on Cape Breton Island and lived for many years in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of nine previous books of poetry. His 2007 collection All Our Wonder Unavenged was honoured with the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Award, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize. In 2014 he won the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award for Bite Down Little Whisper. Published and reviewed internationally, his work has been translated into Czech, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese and Spanish. He died on September 7, 2020.

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