Year Zero is the time of hushed beginnings and endings, the place of naming and unnaming, where language, strange to itself, tiptoes along songlines as though following passages of Koto music. In Brian Henderson's poetry, poised and listening on this hinge of creativity, ontological wonder is informed by awareness of the paradoxes at the heart of language, that language wants you for itself, and that what is named, falls. Whether focusing on the dying of a parent or fellow poet, or on the coming-to-be of a child, this poetry is alive with the truth that "The dead burn through us/ the not yet born."

"What a wonderful book this is! Henderson tells the old story how dear ones die, and new lives come to be. In a world that's dense, opaque, yet lit with random hints of something being uttered. The result is a marvel of passionate, glancing eloquence. I wanted it never to end." --Dennis Lee

Brian Henderson is a Governor General’s Award finalist as well as a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award and the author of twelve books including The Alphamiricon, a deck of visual poem cards now online on Ubuweb. His latest is Unidentified Poetic Object from Brick Books, a poem from which won second in the 2017 Vallum poetry prize. Unidentified Poetic Object received a starred Quill & Quire review.Henderson is a co-editor of the Laurier Poetry Series (with Neil Besner, past VP International at the University of Manitoba), has been the Director of Wilfrid Laurier University Press (1999–2016), the President of the Association of Canadian University Presses, the Treasurer of the Association of Canadian Publishers and is on the board of the Access Copyright Foundation, an organization that funds artists and arts groups and organizations with investments seeded by Access Copyright. He is currently the chair of the Grey Highlands Public Library board.

Brian Henderson's profile page