A subtly powerful collection of poetry which celebrates the shape and details of a full life – from youth through middle age to old age – and begins to face the prospect of its loss.
With the sure hand of a veteran poet, Robert Currie has created a book of commemoration, of reading into the permanent record, his life, its events, and the beloved people in it – parents, partners and children, writers, teachers, and students.
His sweep is all encompassing, from his own imagined conception
to – vicariously through his parents demise – his own imagined end. The poems are full of fondness, humour and no little irony, as he looks back at his younger self and the sometimes, but not always, painful loss of innocence.
The final section of Running in Darkness deals with the loss of parents, and the illnesses and untimely deaths of friends. This life, so full of emotion and event, is drawing near its close.
Technique is not the subject here, is not the point. It stands quietly in service of the story being told. Each poem is a small step through this life, but the steps keep coming, they pick up speed, and you suddenly realize they are walking on your heart. And, after the bursts of laughter, bursts of tears, bursts of love, and bursts of years, Robert Currie delivers us a warning with his own startled realization: It goes so fast.
* Finalist, Acorn-Plantos Award * Finalist, Award for Publishing, Saskatchewan Book Awards
