Go Leaving Strange - the latest collection from award-winning poet Patrick Lane - is filled with poems that explore the darker side of human consciousness and desire. A man kills his own six-year-old child in "Weeds." An addict strives to keep ahead of death in "Smack." But amid this bleak landscape of pity and regret, there is also redemption and hope, life and beauty - in the wisteria seed that "shines between the folded legs of the pod, demure, waiting for spring . . . ," in the polished silver bowl of a spoon, or in the "blue flare" of an "old blacksmith tempering iron in dust and fire." And the poet's presence is everywhere as he seeks to find meaning in this existence.

Patrick Lane, considered by most writers and critics to be one of Canada's finest poets, was born in 1939 in Nelson, BC. He grew up in the Kootenay and Okanagan regions of the BC Interior, primarily in Vernon. He came to Vancouver and co-founded a small press, Very Stone House, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne. He then drifted extensively throughout North and South America. He worked at a variety of jobs, from labourer to industrial accountant, but much of his life was spent as a poet. He was also the father of five children and grandfather of nine. He won nearly every literary prize in Canada, from the Governor General's Literary Award to the Canadian Authors Association Award to the Dorothy Livesay Prize. In 2014, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada, an honour that recognizes a lifetime of achievement and merit of a high degree. His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and translated into many languages. His more recent books include Witness: Selected Poems 1962-2010 (Harbour Publishing, 2010), The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane (Harbour Publishing, 2011), Washita (Harbour Publishing, 2014; shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award), Deep River Night (McClelland & Stewart, 2018) and a posthumous collection, The Quiet in Me (Harbour Publishing, 2022). Lane spent the later part of his life in Victoria, BC, with his wife, the poet Lorna Crozier. He died in 2019.

Patrick Lane's profile page

"...Go Leaving Strange asks the reader to examine their history and their nature, as Lane examines his own...But Go Leaving Strange doesn't necessarlity ask the reader to 'deal' with the problems of the world by changing them -- as it says in 'Bent,' 'Bent is what you try to straighten, but metal breaks from weakness.'"
-Ian Blechschmidt, Imprint

Imprint

"Patrick Lane's Go Leaving Strange (Harbour Publishing, 117 pages) is a watershed book for a poet whose work has been recognised with Canada's most prestigious literary awards. It's two sections, 'After' and 'The Addiction Poems' almost seem like books by different poets, but together they record the spirtual and artistic death and rebirth of a writer whose poetry has always had the impact of a switchblade pulled at a tea party...This new voice of Patrick Lane is more honest. It recognizes that the tragic and beautiful dilemma of being human is not something that can be summed up with a few clever lines or resolved by a quick sucker punch to the soul."
-John Moore, Vancouver Sun

Vancouver Sun

"Go Leaving Strange is a book of coming to terms with the erosion of a mountain, yet if we hold a piece of of it the way Lane does, we may see the mountain, its beauty what perfects us in the moment."
-Daniela Bouneva Elza, Quills

Quills: Canadian Poetry Magazine

"It may be the most enduring quality of Lane's poetry�: the way he rides willingly into black territory to embrace the horrors there, just so they might set us all free."
-The Malahat Review

"...Haunting, ominous lines draw a bleak yet strikingly brillant and intriguing picture of B.C.'s interior for the reader. In 'Weeds,' Lane paints a picture of the interior reminiscent of T.S. Elliot's 'Wasteland,' and the 'terrible beauty' of the coyotes's flesh in 'Coyote.'"
-Jenn Marshall, The Peak

The Peak