Campfire Radio Rhapsody is Windsor poet Robert Earl Stewart's follow-up to his acclaimed, Lampert AwardÐnominated debut, Something Burned Along the Southern Border. The humour that many readers found in that first collection takes a turn for the darker here, but the poems are livelier than ever. Campfire Radio Rhapsody features shadowy trains, a cab-driving opera singer, a multi-armed mollusk, and a mass exodus of clowns. From the epic 'The Country Reporter' (Stewart edits a small-town newspaper) to the rash of startling poems of just half a dozen lines, this is a book by a writer who is digging more deeply into himself and struggling to find his place in a turbulent world with eruptions of beauty and the absurd.

ROBERT STEWART, born in Toronto, Canada, is an award-winning wildlife photographer and the director of Sharkwater. Stewart began photographing underwater when he was 13. He became a certified scuba instructor trainer at age 18, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Western Ontario. He has also studied marine biology and zoology at universities in Kenya and Jamaica. Stewart spent four years travelling the world as the chief photographer for the Canadian Wildlife Federation magazines, and has logged thousands of hours underwater, using the latest in rebreather and camera technologies. His work underwater and on land has appeared in nearly every media form worldwide: from BBC Wildlife, Asian Diver, Outpost and GEO magazines to the Discovery Channel, ABC, BBC, night clubs and feature films. In one of several trips to the Galápagos Islands, after encountering shark “long-lining,” an indiscriminate and wasteful practice, Stewart decided to make a movie. Seeking support from private investors, he rented high-end HD video cameras and embarked on a five-year, fifteen-country odyssey to make Sharkwater.

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Robert Earl Stewart's Campfire Radio Rhapsody misses nothing. Cunning and bold, this collection exists in the tender dark space between tooth and claw. An exceptionally adroit storyteller, Stewart calmly walks us into the eye of the impending storm with uncommon grace. He writes the way the rest of us wish we lived: fearless and searching.Ó (Dani Couture, author of Good Meat and Sweet)