The Path of Loneliness explores separateness and the many facets of love, desire, grief and loss that we experience during our life journey. Although we walk with others, some closely, some casually, ultimately, we all walk alone. Love makes the path less lonely and comes in many forms, real and surreal, requited and unrequited ghostly and mysterious. Though lovers walk love's pathway together, there is always a small loneliness nestled inside each heart and soul that remains separate. This book opens up the secret world of emotion and spirit sequestered inside us, hidden to our outer selves. The book coaxes the reader to delve into those hidden areas and revisit old secrets, some forgotten and some remembered, allowing us to come away with a truer knowledge of our place in life as we walk our own "Path of Loneliness."

Candice James served two terms as Poet Laureate of New Westminster, BC, and is now Poet Laureate Emerita. She is author of thirteen books most recently: Merging Dimensions (2015); Short Shots (2016); Colours of India (2016); City of Dreams: The New Westminster Poems (2016); and The Water Poems (2017). Her poetry has appeared in many international anthologies and magazines and her poems have been translated into Arabic, Italian, Bengali and Farsi. She is also a visual artist, musician, singer/songwriter, workshop facilitator, Founder of Royal City Literary Arts Society, recipient of the Bernie Legge Artist Cultural Award, and Pandora's Collective Citizenship Award. She lives in New Westminster, BC.

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"Yet again, Candice James has produced a beautiful and heartwarming collection of poetry. A lovely set of poems on landscape, love, and loneliness that gently unfold to leave the reader moved, transported, and inspired. Each line is a soaring melody and when the lines are combined into a powerful whole you have your very own complete symphony."
-- Alan Hill, Poet Laureate, New Westminster, BC, and author of We Came from Water and Narrow Road to the Far West

"Candice James is a poet of versatility and expansion. In this collection, The Path of Loneliness, she takes the reader on a journey of the heart. My favourite poem, "Again and Again," speaks of the infinite and the ordinary, in a way that uses cadence to reinforce the impossible. Candice's own strong musical background is the golden thread these poems are attached to. Beautiful language and sparkling imagery make The Path of Loneliness relevant and vital."
--Jude Neal, author of Impromptu and Splendid in its Silence

"Of loneliness much has been said. More reflections emerge as we navigate the isolating, unembracing times of covid-19. But here, Candice James paints the purple of being lonely in love. With another brush, the dusty lonely of loss. With another, the shadows of colonized star. All this, on an empty canvas of loneliness as a choice to be made and remade."
--Salimah Valiani, author of Land of the Sky and Cradles

"In these poems, Candice James confronts a world of disappointment, loss and sadness when the scintillating promise of romantic love dies. In The Path of Loneliness the journey is one marked by the ghosts of past loves, of regret and unspoken, un-lived intentions. Yet, the way travelled is one of persistence of the soul and spirit to rise through all the elements: air, fire, water, dust to come through. The poet's destination is a place of art, music and most of all, poetry. In the poem "Poets' Dance," James invites us in, "... where liquid, quicksilver lightning / shakes the foundations of the mind / and rocks the questing heart...." Poems of sorrow and dashed hope arrive at the joyful conclusion in the beautifully rhymed final poem: "...something still breathes ... alive in the paint."
--Pam Galloway, author of Passing Stranger and Parallel Lines