Description
The Bare Plum of Winter Rain is the latest collection of poetry by award-winning poet Patrick Lane, author of more than 20 published books of poetry. An icon in the Canadian literary scene, Lane has won nearly every literary prize in Canada, including the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1979 for Poems, New and Selected, the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Poetry in 1988 for Selected Poems and the Dorothy Livesay Prize for poetry in 1996 for Too Spare, Too Fierce.
Gathering together the last five years' worth of work, The Bare Plum of Winter Rain is an evocative collection, boldly exploring themes that range from meditations on the death of a mother, to love, sex and poverty, all with the craft and success of a master poet. From the stunning title poem, "The Bare Plum of Winter Rain," to the spirited love poems "Cunt" and "Vulva," Lane has created an exciting mix of style, voice and rhythm - reaffirming his place among the top poets in Canada and the world.
About the author
Patrick Lane, considered by most writers and critics to be one of Canada's finest poets, was born in 1939 in Nelson, BC. He grew up in the Kootenay and Okanagan regions of the BC Interior, primarily in Vernon. He came to Vancouver and co-founded a small press, Very Stone House, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne. He then drifted extensively throughout North and South America. He worked at a variety of jobs, from labourer to industrial accountant, but much of his life was spent as a poet. He was also the father of five children and grandfather of nine. He won nearly every literary prize in Canada, from the Governor General's Literary Award to the Canadian Authors Association Award to the Dorothy Livesay Prize. In 2014, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada, an honour that recognizes a lifetime of achievement and merit of a high degree. His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and translated into many languages. His more recent books include Witness: Selected Poems 1962-2010 (Harbour Publishing, 2010), The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane (Harbour Publishing, 2011), Washita (Harbour Publishing, 2014; shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award), Deep River Night (McClelland & Stewart, 2018) and a posthumous collection, The Quiet in Me (Harbour Publishing, 2022). Lane spent the later part of his life in Victoria, BC, with his wife, the poet Lorna Crozier. He died in 2019.
Excerpt: The Bare Plum of Winter Rain (by (author) Patrick Lane)
The instrument of your poverty
is an infinite departure, the hawk unseen
until you see him without prey
in the bare plum of winter rain.
He rests inside hunger
and he does not sing today.
How rare the gesture we make
with nothing. It is of the spirit and without
value. The bare plum, the winter rain
and the hawk seeing what you cannot say.
These steady accretions, yet allowing them
to stay as you stay with music after music
plays, and of course there is always,
always hunger, and, of course, poverty,
and the bare plum, empty, and the rain.
