With the publication of Lee’s memoir of growing up on a farm insouthwestern Ontario, Black Moss launched itsSettlements series. This is a series of books in which Canadian artists reflect onthe land, the neighbourhood and the “place” in their lives; thereby telling thestory of this country.

Lee is:" a poet, not afarmer, though I was born a farmer’s son. I spent the first nineteen years ofmy life on the very land settled by my great-great grandfather and namesake,John Lee.”

He goes on to say that whenever he visits the farm where he wasborn and raised, he is ”painfully aware that important things are slowly comingto a close.” Lee wrote this book just before his father died in early spring.He wrote, “My father has died and my mother and uncle are growing old andslowing down. I need only regard the fading glory of the prize plaques in thesheep pen, and the black paint shaling from the failing barns with their saggingwhite-washed stone foundations to know I am right. And when I seethe crisis coming concerning what to do with the land, I realize that I havebetrayed my parentage by leaving. However, I have always felt something ofa foundling in me. I was never qualified to stay despite my consanguinaryobligations. My roots are deep in the land of my father and the land is deepin me. So, what to do? I am no tiller, nor have I ever been. I was born tobooks. “My earth is made from paper. My plough turns a furrow of words.”

In 2005 John B. Lee was inducted as Poet Laureate of Brantford in perpetuity. In 2011 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Norfolk County (2011-14) and in 2015 Honourary Poet Laureate of Norfolk County for life and in 2017 he received a Canada 150 Medal from the Federal Government of Canada for “his outstanding contribution to literary development both at home and abroad.” A recipient of over eighty prestigious international awards for his writing, he is winner of the $10,000 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, the only two time recipient of the People’s Poetry Award, and 2006 winner of the inaugural Souwesto Orison Writing Award (University of Windsor). He has well-over seventy books published to date and is the editor of seven anthologies including two best-selling works: That Sign of Perfection: poems and stories on the game of hockey; and Smaller Than God: words of spiritual longing. His work has appeared internationally in over 500 publications, and has been translated into French, Spanish, Korean and Chinese. He has read his work in nations all over the world including South Africa, France, Korea, Cuba, Canada and the United States. He has received letters of praise from Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Australian Poet, Les Murray, and Senator Romeo Dallaire. Called “the greatest living poet in English,” by poet George Whipple, he lives in Port Dover, Ontario where he works as a full time author.

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