National Network for Equitable Library Service

I've lived the way a field is sometimes / a shelter for mice / or sometimes a source of game / for a hawkInspired by the literary landscape of the late poet John Thompson, Kevin Irie's The Tantramar Re-Visionpresents a portrait of nature where the benign and the bedevilled coexist, collude, or collide.The Tantramar Re-Visioncharts routes of discovery as it follows trails, waterways, flights, and fears, be it through the woods, the wilds, the page, or the mind where "it's hard to admit / you are not to your taste." It questions an existence in which the inhuman thrives, ignorant of divinity, while the human psyche continues to search for answers as "life takes directions / away from" it. The Tantramar Marsh setting of John Thompson's Stilt Jackresonates with Irie's landscapes of birds, fish, plants, and wildlife, all still within reach yet part of a world where "wind carries sounds / it cannot hear."Insightful and meditative, The Tantramar Re-Visionis poetry of the inner self and the outside observer, a poetic testament to the ways literature creates its own landmarks and nature survives without knowing a word.