Winner: 2017 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry In his final years, Richard Harrison's father suffered from a form of dementia, but he died without ever forgetting the poems he had memorized as a student and had taught to Richard as a child. In 2013, the poet feared his father's ashes had been lost in the flood water that ravaged Alberta--a crisis that would become the inciting event and central theme of this collection. Combining elements of memoir, elegy, lyrical essay and personal correspondence with appreciations of literary works ranging from haiku to comic books, Richard Harrison has written a book of great intellectual depth that is as generous as it is enchanting.
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On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood
Winner: 2017 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry In his final years, Richard Harrison's father suffered from a form of dementia, but he died without ever forgetting the poems he had memorized as a student and had taught to Richard as a child. In 2013, the poet feared his father's ashes had been lost in the flood water that ravaged Alberta--a crisis that would become the inciting event and central theme of this collection. Combining elements of memoir, elegy, lyrical essay and personal correspondence with appreciations of literary works ranging from haiku to comic books, Richard Harrison has written a book of great intellectual depth that is as generous as it is enchanting.
Popular Reviews(1)
Reviewed by hbicsWhile I did quite love individual poems within this collection (A Poem in the Arms of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Gone, A Home on Al-Mutanabbi Street, Maps and Writing Paper), I think this suffered from a mismatch in my expectations versus what the collection was actually about. Given the line from "Gone" on the cover, that 'characters in a novel can escape everything / except their story, I think I was expecting the rest of this collection to be something different.