Whazzat?
- Publisher
- Latitude 46 Publishing
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2017
- Category
- Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780995823525
- Publish Date
- Sep 2017
- List Price
- $20.00
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Whazzat? explores how poetry invites us to look at things differently, with a sense of surprise, a whazzat. It looks at paradoxes we meet in life, and ways of resolving them through shifts of perspective. Poems cluster in four sections around paradoxes in different parts of our lives. Can we square the sheer unpredictability of events - especially with climate change - with our recurring need for certainty? Can we revitalize downtown cores without losing a sense of our past? In our personal lives, can we see unavoidable paradoxes as "gifts" that heighten our sense of wonder, rather than threatening to divide us in two? Is there a "now" we can live in, or do we inevitably live in our pasts and imagined futures? A number of poems have been previously published in literary magazines and anthologies across Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.A. This collection draws them together.
About the author
Roger Nash is a past—President of the League of Canadian Poets, and inaugural Poet Laureate of Sudbury. As President of the League, he worked with Senator Grafstein to create the Parliamentary Canadian Poet Laureate position in Ottawa. He's published seventeen books of poetry, short fiction and philosophy.
Literary awards include: the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry, the PEN/O.Henry Prize Story Award, the Confederation Poets Award (twice), and first prizes in poetry contests with Prism international and The Fiddlehead.
Roger was born in the blitz in England, and grew up in Egypt, Singapore and China. He came to Canada in 1965, living mainly in Sudbury, but also in Guelph and Athabasca. He's Professor Emeritus in Philosophy (environmental ethics) at Laurentian University, and a synagogue cantor.
Excerpt: Whazzat? (by (author) Roger Nash)
WEATHER FORECAST
There' s a 40% probability of rain tomorrow,
60% for the whole weekend. Quite certainly
a probability. No doubt about that.
Possible umbrellas will be fully open
- those are the blue ones with pink stripes on.
Actual umbrellas have no place
in any of our forecasts. They gather presumed
dust in their quite credible hall-stands.
We unfold them only in our weather archives
of the last century. Those of you tuning in
on our alleged tomorrow will put your supposed
feet up in your likely houses.
But you're liable to have more holes in your socks.
It's on the cards you'll get a date and make love
this week, but only just plausible. Love
is always plausible. Grab the chance.
- A sporting chance, if sport, by the rules
and without its strong tendency to drugs, is still
not unlikely. The colour of the rose bud
you may hand to your date has a 40% liability,
if it blooms, of being red, with all the hybrids about.
Expectancy is, reliably, the most we can have.
Editorial Reviews
"Roger Nash is a natural philosopher (naturally) of the natural beauty, wit, and charm of nature. In poems that are both insightful and delightful, playful yet acutely aware of the world in which his poet's eye deciphers the intricacy of life, Nash gives us a collection that is not only worth reading but worthy of the delight he engenders with every poem and every line." - Bruce Meyer, poet laureate, Barrie, Ont.