Cage of Light holds together many narrative strands. It traces an environment of familial violence into adulthood. It witnesses the filter of addiction in life and love; it considers what sustains and protects, what constricts and harms, and the fluidity of these things. It addresses the practice of Zen and time spent in a Rinzai Monastery in Japan. It uses a language of struggle and seeks through the ‘food chains’ of human animal life, including episodes from literature and dream, for ways to see clearly what we foment as we go, and for what is there regardless.

Cage of Light is Ned Baeck’s second full-length collection of poems with Guernica Editions. (Wait, his debut collection, was released in 2018). He is also the author of a chapbook with LyricalMyrical press. Ned studied Liberal Arts at Concordia University and Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He has lived for eighteen years in Vancouver, and has worked mostly in the restaurant industry. In 2019 he travelled to Japan and spent five months at a Rinzai Temple, returning first to Toronto, where he stayed a year, before settling again in Vancouver.

Ned Baeck's profile page