One of B.C.’s indefatiguable poets and literary spark-plugs, Candice James is prolific, exuberant, and writes grown-up poetry that’s seen its share of dust and joy out on the road. A poet with the long view her work is nature observant, freighted with tenderness and shaped by traditional form as well as metrical invention. There’s no artifice here: what you see is what you get—James is a poet of direct experience and recollected emotion. Old love, the blessedness of rain, things broken too long to be fixed, or the blue stillness of eternity—all are netted by her unquenchable zeal for poetry. From her opening epigraph from Lao-tzu through images of a Captain Morgan kind of night that only long years in Canada can truly understand, the music of what happens is present here in every bittersweet refrain.

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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