Telephone wires, dark as a line in a schoolboy's notebook against the dawn; paint fl akes from houses drifting down like dust; the hulking shadow of a desk that emerges, stock-still as a cow, in the moment of waking. Join poet Robert Melançon for a quiet celebration of his city, its inhabitants, and the language that gives it life.

You go forth, drunk on the multitudes, drunk on everything, while the lampposts sprinkle nodding streets with stars.

Born in Montreal in 1947, Robert Melançon studied at the Université de Montréal and in Tours where he wrote his doctorate on French baroque poetry. He has published three books of poems: Inscriptions (1987), Peinture aveugle which won the Governor General's Award in 1979, and Territoire (1981). This book is based on a revised version of Peinture aveugle.

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Donald McGrath grew up in a fishing village on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, leaving at nineteen to study at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He has been a longshoreman, factory worker and waiter, and currently works as a translator in Montreal. He has published one previous poetry collection, At First Light (1995). His poems have appeared widely in periodicals, and one was selected for the longlist Web anthology of the 2011 Montreal Poetry Prize.

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