In this series of elegant and wide-ranging meditations on language, wilderness, poetry, and technocracy, John Steffler takes us on a guided tour of one poet’s mental workshop. His focus is vividly personal, shaped by his interests and experience, and at the same time universal. What is it to be human? Steffler is not afraid to be provocative, but he is also compassionately alert to moral, political, and cultural complexity. This is a book that will convince you that poetry can indeed make a great deal happen.

John Steffler (1947) grew up near Thornhill, ON. In 1975, he began teaching at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, NL. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright won the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Prize for best first book in 1992. His other awards include the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Artist of the Year Award, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize for his most recent collection, That Night We Were Ravenous.

John Steffler's profile page

"[This book] hearkens to a tradition of nature writing that includes Bashō and Thoreau, among many others." —The Fiddlehead
Praise for previous work:
"One of our finest lyric poets." —Ken Babstock
"John Steffler is Canada's most sensuously passionate writer. Reading him, we are put in touch with the pure erotic draw which the world exercises on him. The acuity of his perception, and the size of his heart, make his poems an essential part of our literature." —Don McKay
"Steffler's persona is a diviner, seeking out the ancient energies of the natural world, the atavistic source." —Mary Dalton