Speaking of Kevin Roberts, the Australian writer Nigel Krauth says, "Roberts takes the common man's point of view and proves that humanity is still connected to the great turning of the universe." Certainly this "New and Selected" provides ample evidence of Roberts' sense of connectedness, as he selects the best from his previous eleven books of poetry and shows that for over thirty years he has been one of the more powerful voices on the Canadian scene.

Like Ted Hughes, Roberts frequently employs strong images of the countryside to explore the human condition – as in his earliest volume, Cariboo Fishing Notes (1973), where he works the trout streams of the Cariboo for what the art of fishing reveals of philosophical stances. Roberts also explores the work culture of Canada's resource economy, as in Deep Line which tells of skippering a salmon trolling boat and "deep lining" the fish.

In S'ney'mos, Roberts widens his themes to document in poetic terms the coal mining historyof Nanaimo and the effect mining had on the aboriginal people of the area. Stonefish takes Roberts into new territory in Tahiti, with a sequence of poems based on the life of Gauguin. In Cobalt 3, Roberts again opens up new territory when he offers a grim but blackly comic rendering of his own personal duel with cancer. With the addition of many new poems in Writing the Tides, Roberts shows that he is still at the top of his form.

Kevin Roberts is the author of Deep Line, West Country, S'neymous and Flash Harry and the Daughters of Divine Light.

Kevin Roberts' profile page

Writing the Tides: New and Selected Poems

Writing the Tides contains thirty-three new poems and selections from past publications spanning over thirty-five years. With Roberts, we travel to places he has lived or visited, such as British Columbia, Australia, Thailand and Tahiti. And as we accompany him, we learn something about the human condition. Roberts takes us on a journey through life where like the ocean tides our lives “flow and ebb, ebb and flow” and where we “[slip-slide] through the roar of lion waves to some imagined sandy shore.” A dominant theme in this collection of lyric poetry is death, particularly in the section Cobalt 3 where Roberts shares with us his three-year struggle with cancer. Yet, for all of his references to death, he says, “Every dawn [has] a new start” and he continues on his journey.

Roberts has written eleven books of poetry, two books of short stories and two plays.

Caution: some coarse language