New edition of Michael Turner's seminal 1995 poetry collection, including a new essay by the author.

When Michael Turner's Kingsway was published in 1995, critics and readers were either effusive in their praise or confounded by the book's unwillingness to adhere to traditional poetry structures. In this collection of linked poems that evolve around Kingsway, Vancouver's oldest thoroughfare that cuts diagonally across the city, the single-stanza poems approximate city blocks, as diverse and complicated as the neighbourhoods Kingsway traverses; in this way, Kingsway is neither a "street" nor an "avenue" but a "way"of thinking about cities and people and different points of view. Kingsway is a place to get lost, to lose oneself; a starting point and a destination.

This new edition, published on the 20th anniversary of the book's first publication, includes a new essay and photographs by the author.

Michael Turner was born in North Vancouver, B.C. in 1962 and spent his teenage summers working in the Skeena River salmon fishery. After high school, he travelled through Europe and North Africa, eventually to the University of Victoria, where he completed a BA (anthropology) in 1986. Between 1987–1993 he sang and played banjo in Hard Rock Miners; upon his retirement from touring, he opened the Malcolm Lowry Room (1993–1997). His first book, Company Town (1991), was nominated for a Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. His second book, Hard Core Logo, was adapted to feature-film. Kingsway (1995), American Whiskey Bar (1997), The Pornographer’s Poem (1999) and 8x10 (2009) followed. A frequent collaborator, he has written scripts with Stan Douglas, poems with Geoffrey Farmer and songs with cub, Dream Warriors, Fishbone and Kinnie Starr. He blogs at this address mtwebsit@blogspot.com.

Michael Turner's profile page