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Poetry General

The Grey Islands

Brick Books Classics 2

by (author) John Steffler

Publisher
Brick Books
Initial publish date
Feb 2015
Category
General, Canadian
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781894078986
    Publish Date
    Sep 2000
    List Price
    $11.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771313438
    Publish Date
    Feb 2015
    List Price
    $20.00

Classroom Resources

Download Teacher’s Guide

Where to buy it

Description

Deluxe redesign of a seminal book by Canada's former Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Includes new material.

On the occasion of the press's 40th anniversary, Brick Books is proud to present the second of six new editions of classic books from our back catalogue. This new edition of The Grey Islands features a foreword by scholar Adrian Fowler and a detailed and insightful look back at the book and the time of its inception by Steffler himself. Featuring a new cover and design by the renowned typographer Robert Bringhurst.

The Grey Islands is the story of one man's pilgrimage to a remote island of Newfoundland's northern peninsula. Using a broad range of styles, The Grey Islands delivers the bite of raw experience and embraces existence at the edge in all its terror and beauty.

Bent, I circle the building grubbing and rooting. Every shingle and stick I lift yields bait. Things Carm ate and didn?t eat, turned to worms. A kind of organic shadow of the man.

— from "The Grey Islands"

Praise for The Grey Islands:"[The book] illustrates? how the outsider becomes an insider by becoming a supplicant, renouncing the role of saviour and honouring the culture of the people among whom he has decided to make his home." — Adrian Fowler, from the Introduction.

About the author

John Steffler (1947) grew up near Thornhill, ON. In 1975, he began teaching at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, NL. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright won the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Prize for best first book in 1992. His other awards include the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Artist of the Year Award, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize for his most recent collection, That Night We Were Ravenous.

John Steffler's profile page

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