David Bateman and Hiromi Goto’s collaborative poem, Wait Until Late Afternoon, is a nostalgic/anti-nostalgic creative autobiographical conversation. Tracing their relationship to their fathers, their lives, and to each other through the transfiguring effects of alcohol, the narrative travels from glamorous nightclubs and the Jade Market in Taipei to Peterborough, Ontario and Nanton, Alberta. Through memory, mourning, geographies and sexualities, this poetic narrative is at once a memento mori and meditations upon wabi sabi.

David Bateman is a Toronto-based poet, painter, and arts journalist. He has taught creative writing at various universities across Canada. His four collections of poetry, as well as a collaborative long poem (with Hiromi Goto) were published by Frontenac House Press (Calgary) from 2005 through 2014. His first novel, DR SAD, was published by the University of Calgary Press in November of 2020. A collection of short stories & creative non-fiction entitled A MAD BENT DIVA – an anagram for the author’s name – was published by Hidden Brook Press (Brighton) in 2017.

David Bateman's profile page

Hiromi Goto is the award-winning author of many books for youth and adults. Her adult novel, Chorus of Mushrooms (1994) was the recipient of the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book as well as co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Her second adult novel, The Kappa Child, was awarded the James Tiptree Jr. Award. Hopeful Monsters was her first collection of short stories and in 2009, she co-wrote, with David Bateman, her first book of poetry, Wait Until Late Afternoon. More recently her YA novel, Half World, was winner of the 2010 Sunburst Award and the Carl Brandon Parallax Award and was longlisted for the IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award. Her latest YA publication is Darkest Light. Hiromi is also a mentro at Simon Fraser University's The Writer's Studio, an editor, and monther of two grown children. She is at work on graphic novels and short stories.

In honour of its 20th anniversary, NeWest Press released a special edition of her seminal Chorus of Mushrooms in Spring 2014.

Hiromi Goto's profile page