Waking in the Tree House
by Michael Lithgow
ISBN 9781770860988 | 6" x 9" | TPB | $18
Categories:Poetry
Purchase:Local Bookstores | mcnallyrobinson.com | amazon.ca | chapters.indigo.ca
Nominated for the 2012 QWF First Book Award
Synopsis
The poems in Michael Lithgow’s first collection carry us on a stream of sensory impressions towards some heightened awareness. In a voice characterized by curiosity, astonishment, and candour, the poet records what passes through him in settings as various as a derelict rooming house, a hospital room, a junk shop, a Cape Breton farmhouse, the old Jewish Quarter in Cracow, a Montreal bus during morning rush hour. Lithgow’s poems gravitate towards darker terrain – not at the expense of humour and irony, but with an energetic interest in the beauty of what time does to things, and a pleasure in language that searches for meaning a little beyond the bounds of the ordinary.