In this series of elegant and wide-ranging meditations on language, wilderness, poetry, and technocracy, John Steffler takes us on a guided tour of one poet’s mental workshop. His focus is vividly personal, shaped by his interests and experience, and at the same time universal. What is it to be human? Steffler is not afraid to be provocative, but he is also compassionately alert to moral, political, and cultural complexity. This is a book that will convince you that poetry can indeed make a great deal happen.

John Steffler (1947) grew up near Thornhill, ON. In 1975, he began teaching at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, NL. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright won the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Prize for best first book in 1992. His other awards include the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Artist of the Year Award, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize for his most recent collection, That Night We Were Ravenous.

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