"Through the city streets the bus launches / into the storm. Already the shapes, the terrain / outside is unfriendly, / the air wild as a monsoon. / People peer into the mirror of the night. / They move restlessly on the worn upholstery."
Laurence Hutchman dares readers to peer into the mirror of the night and connect with the world around them, travelling through time and space. He asks us to consider how we connect with time and preserve our stories. This collection explores both public history and personal history?on one page we contemplate the life of Anne Frank, then on the next we may learn of Hutchman's own great—grandmother, Annie O'Brien. Hutchman's poetry is at times heartbreaking and at times filled with wonder, but it is always hopeful. Just as time moves from past to present we all participate in an intertwining story, knit together by shared places.
"Late at night / after the day's search / we find the strands of thought, / love in the voice of many— tongued words, / in the midst of chaos."

Laurence Hutchman was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Toronto. He received his PhD from the Université de Montreal and has taught at a number of universities. For twenty-three years he was a professor of English literature at the Université de Moncton at the Edmundston Campus. Hutchman has published 13 books of poetry, including Foreign National, Beyond Borders, Reading the Water, Personal Encounters, Two Maps of Emery, The House of Shifting Time, Fire and Water (in collaboration with Eva Kolacz) and Swimming Toward Sun Collected Poems: 1968-2020. He has also co-edited the anthology Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada and edited In the Writers’ Words.

His poetry has received many grants and awards, including the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence and has been translated into numerous languages. In 2017 he was named poet laureate of Emery, north Toronto. He lives with his wife, the artist and poet, Eva Kolacz in Oakville, Ontario.

Laurence Hutchman's profile page