Ken Cathers has for decades been one of the country’s best, if unsung, poets. In his late middle-age he’s now becoming nothing less than a master. Cathers always “sounds” right, and never more than here in Missing Pieces. He knows how to score a poem—line, breath, stanza, breath again—where few poets have any ear at all for what they are doing. There’s a sensitivity, a subtlety and inventiveness, in these poems that allows cadence to dance slow down the heart of each page. The show-off poets, the cuter-by-half toss-it-off poets, and the coffee-table narrative poets our country throws up at us so predictably couldn’t sing like this in their dreams. Organically shaped lines, and never an excess word. But not only dance and move, Cathers stuns us with “image” too, more cunningly and perhaps more darkly than ever before. Above all, though, his lines flow like pure liquid. Cathers has never been a dullard mainstream poet, and never a glitz boy. The narrowest of niches, then, that he works in, without the attention due. This is the strongest book so far, by one of our most consummate poets. Bravo, and take a bow. You’ve far outdistanced the dross, Ken Cathers, and maintained a poet’s integrity while doing so. A stunning book: no-one else could have written it this well.

Born (1951) and raised in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, Ken Cathers has a B.A.from the University of Victoria and a M.A. from York University in Toronto. He is a senior pulp operator at Harmac Pacific Pulp Mill on Vancouver Island where he has worked for over 22 years. He has been married since 1971 to his wife Inge, they have raised two sons, Jason and Devon, and are now enjoying their new found freedom.

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