Since 1975, Ken Norris has produced some of Canada’s most intriguing poetry. Whether detailing the amorous lives of produce (Vegetables), documenting travels to the South Seas (The Better Part of Heaven and Islands), engaging contentious social and political issues (In the Spirit of the Times and In the House of No), or taking the measure of the successes and failures of contemporary love (The Music and Limbo Road), Norris has always given us quirky, edgy poetry that has continually revealed unanticipated possibilities and explored new horizons. His work has been widely anthologized in the English-speaking world, as well as in translation in France, Belgium and Israel. His latest book of poems, Limbo Road, is to be published this fall in translation in Quebec by Ecrits des Forges.
Hotel Montreal offers the literary traveller a haven for clandestine encounters with the intimate and the exotic. It includes selections from nineteen ground-breaking books of poetry (a number of them now out of print or hard to find), as well as a healthy selection of accomplished new poems. It draws together the very best of Norris’s lyric poetry from a 25-year period, while offering the reader an indispensable panoramic view of the work of a poet at the height of his creative power.

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He emigrated to Canada in the early seventies, where he quickly became one of the infamous Vehicule Poets, essential in helping to develop and maintain a particular style of Anglo-poetry in Montreal.

One of Canada’s most prolific poets, Ken Norris has always given his readers subtly capricious and edgy poetry that reveals unanticipated possibilities and explores new horizons. He is the author of two dozen books and chapbooks of poetry, and is the editor of eight anthologies of poetry and poetics. His work has been widely anthologized in Canada and throughout the English-speaking world, as well as published in translation in France, Belgium, Israel and China. Quebec poet Pierre Des Ruisseaux has translated two of his books into French, La route des limbes (Limbo Road, Écrits des Forges) and Hotel Montréal (Éditions du Noroît).

Norris teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Maine. He divides his time between Canada, the United States and Asia.

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“Unlock[s] a chrysalis of perplexity, awe, joy, and revelation...”
— Montreal Review of Books