Midgic
by Douglas Lochhead

October 2003 | Poetry | $18.95 CAN | $18.95 US
1894031792 | 9781894031790 | Trade Paper

Midgic is a small community on the edge of New Brunswick's Tantramar marshes, thought by historian William Francis Ganong to have been named for a Mi'kmaq descriptive for "a point of highland into a marsh." In this new suite of poems, Douglas Lochhead displays the sure, grid-laying eye of the archeologist, mapping each small detail in his concise lyric shorthand. Like Lochhead's High Marsh Road (1980) and Dykelands (1989), Midgic employs a method of repeated encounters with a specific place to reveal over time a rhythm and logic otherwise invisible in both the landscape and the visitant. Lochhead's gift lies in his ability to amplify the truths of the greater world while speaking of a single place in whispers.

Author Biography

Douglas Lochhead has published over 20 volumes of poetry in the past five decades, including most recently Orkney: October Diary (2002), Weathers: Poems New & Selected (2002) and Cape Enragé (2000). He was Founding Librarian and a Senior Fellow at Massey College, Professor of English, University College, University of Toronto, and is now Professor Emeritus of Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Poet Laureate of Sackville, New Brunswick, where he makes his home.

Reviews

"Lochhead has that rare ability to write simply about ordinary things and yet provoke the reader to new insights and emotions."Canadian Literature Review

"It's as beautiful as the district it celebrates." E.E. Cran, The New Brunswick Reader