In the summer of 1994, guided by the image of his childhood, award-winning Canadian poet Stephen Scobie returned to his native Scotland and set out on a journey that took him through the country's most beautiful and historic regions. The lyrical meditations of Taking the Gate are part poetry, part prose; part travel writting, part autobiography and create an evocative account of the rediscovery of landscape and memory. Photographs extend the author's portrayal and chronicle his experiences as past and present converge.

"The thrill of the legendary past is present throughout."
-Books in Canada

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.

Stephen Scobie's profile page