"Bill New, in these fabulous poems, becomes the stroller in the city, the busy idler, the flaneur. But he is also and always the seeker, the savant, risking night as well as day. He is seduced by the flawed city he dares to love; he invites the reader to an equal daring."

- Robert Kroetsch on YVR

"The title of this book hints at both the complexity and the playfulness of New's vision of the world?the wanderer trampling over the globe, finding trees, planting words. By the end of the collection I felt much as the archaeologist feels, in one of these poems, upon uncovering a language-tree, but even more like the farmer in the same poem who may not always know what he is looking at but recognizes that he is looking at something exceptional."

- Jack Hodgins on Underwood Log

"Musically taut, the poems of Stone | Rain return us not only to coastal elements but to the subtle relations between people and the places they happen in or on. These are poems in the largest sense, tuned to the few quick beats in history any of us inhabit."

- Daphne Marlatt on Stone | Rain

WILLIAM NEW is the author and editor of more than fifty books. A native of Vancouver, where he currently lives, he was educated at the University of British Columbia (where he later taught for 37 years) and the University of Leeds. From his first days as a student at UBC, he has been committed to the importance of Canadian writing and to making it accessible to readers around the world. His academic works include A History of Canadian Literature, the massive Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, and several extensive studies of irony and the short story. Writing more personally, his Borderlands: how we talk about Canada and Grandchild of Empire consider how local perspectives inform our political judgments. A prize-winning teacher and researcher, he was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal, and for his services to creative and critical writing he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006.

William New's creative publications include five books for children (including the internationally honoured The Year I Was Grounded) and eleven previous collections of poetry (including Underwood Log, shortlisted for the Governor General's Award; YVR, winner of the City of Vancouver Award; and New & Selected Poems). His latest collection, Neighbours, questions whether any of us ever lives alone.

These poems ask what it means to live near, whether in close proximity or in ragtag memory--and to consider what happens when closeness dissolves and a neighbourhood dies.

W.H. New's profile page