Hiram and Jenny concerns the comings and goings, the deeds and evasions, the Private Poems and Sacred Ejaculations, the maunderings and heroics, the reflections and refractions of past, present and future, of one Hiram and his lady friend Jenny, together with their cast of somewhat skewed friends and often amicable foes, as often as not relatives, who live in and around a small town somewhere in the Canadian Maritimes.

Outram was born in Canada in 1930. He was a graduate of the University of Toronto (English and Philosophy), and worked for many years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a stagehand crew leader. He wrote more than twenty books, four of these published by the Porcupine's Quill (Man in Love [1985], Hiram and Jenny [1988], Mogul Recollected [1993], and Dove Legend [2001]). He won the City of Toronto Book Award in 1999 for his collection Benedict Abroad (St Thomas Poetry Series). His poetry is the subject of a significant work of literary criticism, Through Darkling Air: The Poetry of Richard Outram, by Peter Sanger (Gaspereau Press, 2010).

Richard Outram died in 2005.

Richard Outram's profile page

• Runner-up, Alcuin Award for Excellence in Book Design

'These narrative poems cover many topics and happenings in the lives of our protagonists. The author deals with mundane events in a whimsical fashion which is often humourous, sometimes sad. There is nothing extraordinary or heroic about any of these people or incidents, but Outram manages to see the bizarre or ridiculous side of a situation, and this saves the book from banality. There is also a spiritual quality which balances the vernacular style. Richard Outram may well be a Canadian Dylan Thomas; I suspect the Hiram and Jenny pieces would lend themselves wonderfully to being read aloud. Whether history will place him as one of this century's great lyric story-tellers remains to be seen. At any rate this is a captivating book.'

Canadian Book Review Annual