Steve McOrmond captures what it's like to love and leave your hometown in Lean Days, his debut collection of poetry. From remembering "Saturday night,/ half-tons cruise / Granville Street...Alice gives them the finger/ and you both think you'll die" to receiving a letter from the friend who stayed home, McOrmond's finely crafted poems awake the longing that everyone feels for the town that will never be home again. But the poet doesn't stop there. Having left his home he encounters a different sort of love where "it took a tall drunk guy in a blue dress to tell me I had great lips. It took you to show me who they / were made for..." and discovers new kinds of pain as the city wraps around him, full of the sound of Glenn Gould playing "Adagissimo. The tempo of stars." With honesty, a maritime sensibility, and a subtle way with images, Steve McOrmond's Lean Days invites readers into a past and a present that will resonate deeply with them.

Steve McOrmond is the author of three previous collections of poetry, most recently The Good News About Armageddon (Brick Books, 2010), which appeared on a number of book critics' Best of 2010 lists and was shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. His second collection, Primer on the Hereafter (Wolsak and Wynn, 2006), was awarded the Atlantic Poetry Prize. His debut collection, Lean Days (Wolsak and Wynn, 2004), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Originally from Prince Edward Island, he lives in Toronto.

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