In these passionate poems, this long poem, there is a story (there are stories) which a reader mines out of a landscape of language moulded under great pressure and eloquent of the stresses that formed it. This is non-representational work of great concentration and beauty.

"The skill and intense ardor of the mind at work ... is delightful. The least one can learn from poetry that makes sweet music of the intelligence is that we can still measure, have measure." -- Fred Wah, Books in Canada

Colin Browne’s most recent book of poetry, Here, was published by Talonbooks in September 2020. His extended essay, Entering Time: The Fungus Man Platters of Charles Edenshaw (Talonbooks, 2016), is a poetic exploration of three argillite platters made by Haida artist Da.a xiigang (Charles Edenshaw) between 1885 and 1895. In 2018, Browne and composer Alfredo Santa Ana collaborated on the creation of Music for a Night in May, three new works for string quartet, soprano, and spoken voice, presented at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. He was the guest curator in 2016 for the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition I had an interesting French Artist to see me this summer: Emily Carr and Wolfgang Paalen in British Columbia, a show that featured the largest number of Paalen’s paintings ever exhibited in Canada. He has recently written catalogue essays for exhibitions in New York and Vienna that reflect on the history and legacy of the Surrealist engagement with the ceremonial and monumental arts of the Northwest Coast. Browne is currently working on a book about Wolfgang Paalen’s 1939 journey from Alaska to Victoria, tentatively entitled Wolfgang Paalen’s Northwest Passage.

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