Midgic is a small community on the edge of New Brunswick’s Tantramar marshes, thought by historian William Francis Ganong to have been named for a Mi’kmaq descriptive for “a point of highland into a marsh.” In this new suite of poems, Douglas Lochhead displays the sure, grid-laying eye of the archeologist, mapping each small detail in his concise lyric shorthand. Like Lochhead’s High Marsh Road (1980) and Dykelands (1989), Midgic employs a method of repeated encounters with a specific place to reveal over time a rhythm and logic otherwise invisible in both the landscape and the visitant. Lochhead’s gift lies in his ability to amplify the truths of the greater world while speaking of a single place in whispers.

In the spring of 2001, Douglas Lochhead received the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in English-language Literary Arts from the Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Member of the Order of Canada, the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities, Professor Emeritus at Mount Allison University, Senior Fellow and Founding Librarian at Massey College, University of Toronto, and a life member of the League of Canadian Poets. After beginning his career as an advertising copywriter, he became a librarian, a professor of English, a specialist in typography and fine hand printing, and a bibliographer, scholar, and editor — indeed, he has characterized himself as “an unrepentant generalist.” At Mount Allison University, he was a founder and the director of the Centre for Canadian Studies, and he held the Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Chair in Canadian Studies.

Douglas Lochhead's profile page

“Lochhead has that rare ability to write simply about ordinary things and yet provoke the reader to new insights and emotions.” Canadian Literature Review

“It’s as beautiful as the district it celebrates.” E.E. Cran, The New Brunswick Reader