Occurring in the rooms and corridors where life is lived, these poems emerge from the spaces behind the sofa cushion where things get lost, and in the bedroom where people inhale and exhale together. The Infinite Park documents the ways each day comes undone, and celebrates the tireless minute-by-minute heroics required to put it back together. Honouring the labours of love and confusion, these poems pursue a language of the commonplace, of memories that are kept in boxes, of the family bed where the cats and kids gather, and where words spoken and the warm presence of loved others become indistinguishable from the day.

With his second collection Peter Unwin further develops a verse the Malahat Review praised for its “sardonic clarity ... forever tempered by a deeper caring.” These pages vibrate with moments in which life’s fullness is found in its seemingly empty and random places, and spoken in a language of plain necessity.

Peter Unwin was born in Sheffield, England, and raised in Southern Ontario. He studied at Carleton University in Ottawa. His fiction includes the short story collection The Rock Farmers, which was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the novel Nine Bells for a Man. His non-fiction includes The Wolf’s Head: Writing Lake Superior and Hard Surface: In Search of the Canadian Road. He has travelled extensively in the Canadian north. Currently, he is a Master’s candidate in Culture and Communications at York and Ryerson universities. An avid practitioner of martial arts, baseball, and literature, he lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters.

Peter Unwin's profile page

• Short-listed, ReLit Award - Poetry