In his first full-length collection since winning the prestigious bpNichol Chapbook Award for Small Waterways, and since the release of the landmark Certain Details: The Poetry of Nelson Ball, our most astute observer of nature, people, and the manmade returns with a new book that continues to forge fresh territory. For nearly six decades, Nelson Ball has gone for walks and recorded his observations with a pencil and a small notebook. Those painstaking jottings have grown into one of the most distinguished and recognizable bodies of work in contemporary Canadian poetry.
In Walking, Ball's sublime and ubiquitous nature poems provide a backdrop for poems exploring the nature of human relationships and human responses to being on this earth: love, mourning, curiosity, absurdity, memory, and the will to live. The gathering of poems here will both surprise and satisfy Ball's fans, and provide a compelling introduction for those new to his unique form of meditation and observation.

Nelson Ball is a poet and bookseller living in Paris, Ontario, who has been writing since the early 1960s. He has worked as a labourer, chauffeur, clerk, seasonal forest ranger, record store clerk, and janitor. From 1965 to 1973 he ran the legendary Weed/Flower Press, publishing mimeo editions of early books by Victor Coleman, Carol Bergé, David McFadden, bill bissett, bpNichol, and many others. Nelson is the author of more than 30 poetry books and chapbooks. He and his late wife, the artist Barbara Caruso, are the subject of Catherine Stevenson's 2014 documentary film Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso / Home Project / A Photo Documentary.

Nelson Ball's profile page

"I love 'Gifts from Catherine.' I love the details about the books and the toilet paper, how the poem slowly moves toward its beautiful and surprising end."
-Dag T. Straumsvåg, author of The Lure-Maker from Posio
"Everyone should read Nelson Ball. If you haven't, you have no idea that you're missing out on reading one of the best poets in North America."
-Alice Burdick, author of Book of Short Sentences