Beautifully shaped and with language full of sensuous intimations, here is the latest volume of poems by Steve Luxton. From the tensile short lyrics of "Hermit Crab Song" to the loosely sashaying rhythms of "Morning After: At the Dacha," Luxton's sustained vision compels and fascinates.
As G.V. Downes comments in Canadian Literature, Luxton is both original and aware, a poet "who sees with precision" the Canadian landscape. Like the being in the title poem "Iridium," the reader is urged for a moment to relinquish the grotesque world of appearances to find shapes that sound, touch, and endure — shapes...
" which I, floating on
my usual waking surface,
must drown thoroughly
to see...."
— from Iridium

Born in England, Steve Luxton immigrated as a child to Toronto, Canada. He gained a BA in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto, and an MA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University where he studied under the poets W.D. Snodgrass and Phillip Booth. He has taught literature and creative writing at Champlain, Vanier, and John Abbott Colleges, as well as at Bishop's and Concordia Universities. In addition to the chapbook, Torrent's Gate: Thomas Wolfe Visits Quebec, he has published five volumes of poetry: Late Romantics (with Robert Allen and Mark Teicher), The Hills that Pass By, Iridium, Luna Moth and Other Poems, and In The Vision of Birds. In recognition for his energetic support and promotion of English-language literature in Quebec, he was awarded the Quebec Writers' Federation's Judy Mappin Community Prize. He lives with his wife the poet Angela Leuck in the Eastern Townships' village of Hatley.

Steve Luxton's profile page

"...here, for those who know Montreal's east-end porches and staircases, England and Quebec fuse."
— Canadian Literature
"It moves me very much — a soul crying out in the wilderness, with a strange, mad rhetoric...."
— Louis Dudek
"This is a most interesting poet."
— The Victoria Times Colonist

“...here, for those who know Montreal's east-end porches and staircases, England and Quebec fuse.”

— Canadian Literature

“It moves me very much — a soul crying out in the wilderness, with a strange, mad rhetoric....”

— Louis Dudek

“This is a most interesting poet.”

— The Victoria Times Colonist