Stephen Scobie is known as a prolific Canadian poet (Governor General's Award 1980) and critic (Prix Gabrielle Roy 1986). But he was born in Scotland, in 1943, and spent the first 21 years of his life there, before coming to Canada in 1965. In this new book, Replay (mainly poetry, part prose memoir), Scobie looks back at these early years as if at a series of images, a memory-recording which he can (always bearing in mind the fallibility of memory's service) replay – and repay, and relay, and reply. The poems range widely over the personal – memories of his family, especially of his father, and of the tangled glories of several adolescent love affairs - and the public world - from a despotic namesake in post-War Greece to a sensational murder trial in 1950s Glasgow. What remains throughout is Scotland - the land itself, its history and culture - which the retrospect of 50 years has only brought into the sharper focus of this... Replay.

Stephen Scobie
Born in Scotland, Stephen Scobie is a critic and a poet who won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1980 and the Prix Gabrielle Roy for Canadian Criticism in 1986. A founding editor of Longspoon Press, his literary criticism includes books on bpNichol, Leonard Cohen, Sheila Watson and Bob Dylan. His first book of poetry, Stone Poems, was published by Talonbooks in 1974. His critical work bpNichol: What History Teaches, published in 1984 is part of the Talonbooks New Canadian Criticism Series, edited by Frank Davey.

Frank Davey
Born in Vancouver, Frank Davey attended the University of British Columbia where he was a co-founder of the avant-garde poetry magazine TISH. Since 1963, he has been the editor-publisher of the poetics journal Open Letter. In addition, he co-founded the world’s first on-line literary magazine, SwiftCurrent in 1984. Davey writes with a unique panache as he examines with humour and irony the ambiguous play of signs in contemporary culture, the popular stories that lie behind it, and the struggles between different identity-based groups in our globalizing society?racial, regional, gender-based, ethnic, economic?that drive this play.

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