Patrick Lane is one of Canada's foremost poets - intense, starkly honest and disturbing on the one hand, yet subtle, compassionate, even gentle on the other. The events of a life, the events that affect a life, and the way a life affects the world around it, are central to his poetics, and the natural world, the tiniest details of which are recorded with an acuity and sometimes a tenderness that take your breath away, is everywhere in his work. Place, family, experience, observation and identity echo through his poems; he is a factual poet for whom every experience produces its fictions and these are constantly delved into and explored for the truth.

The present selection, made by John Kinsella from nine of Patrick Lane's poetry books (which number over twenty in all), seeks to pick up some of the major threads in the poet's work. Kinsella has also provided a thoughtful and illuminating introduction (part of it in the form of a discussion with the poet himself) to this, Lane's first - and long overdue volume of poetry published in the UK.

"A truly great poet," Lane will deliver warts and all, and you'll be shocked and delighted at once. You'll find yourself thinking about issues you'd rather push to the back of your mind." - John Kinsella

What the Stones Remember / There is a Season - A Memoir

Patrick Lane's book, What the Stones Remember, published in Canada as There Is A Season, is Patrick Lane's exquisite - and shocking - memoir of love, despair, hope, and staggering courage. One of North America's finest poets, Patrick Lane is not only an accomplished writer, he is also an avid gardener and an observant naturalist. He lives on Vancouver Island, a place of uncommon beauty where the climate is mild, the air is soft, wildlife is still plentiful, and the growing season lasts all year.

Less well known about Patrick Lane is that he is an alcoholic and, in 2000, came face-to-face with the inevitable choice: he could continue drinking and expect to die in short order, or he could quit and live. He went into rehab and, in the first month of the new century, returned to his beloved garden, shaky but alive. For a year, he stayed close to home, gardening and slowly retrieving himself from the grip of alcohol and cocaine dependency, all the while casting his mind back over his life, especially his childhood years, searching among the memories he'd tried to drown for the roots of his addiction.

In his memoir, Patrick Lane takes readers on the roller-coaster ride of his first alcohol-free year, expertly weaving memories of his hard early life in the interior of British Columbia with wondrous descriptions of the activity in his garden - his own and the lives of the plants, animals, and insects that also inhabit it. Lane has gardened for as long as he can remember, and his garden's life has become inseparable from his own. A new bloom on a plant, a skirmish among the birds, the way a tree bends in the wind, and the slow, measured change of seasons, invariably bring to his mind an episode from his eventful past.

Accompany Patrick Lane during that first year as he wanders his garden, the place where he slowly but surely learned to live without booze and drugs, and where botanical 'madeleines' release in him a flood of memory.

"In the sure and steady hands of a writer at the peak of his power, [this story] is an achingly beautiful journey...He moves through his garden with fear and quiet exhaltation. His memories are never self-pitying, but there is a sorrowful beauty to the strong, poetic language. Despite the savage reality of the revelations, there is a peacefulness, a maturity of vision that is a pure gift to the reader." - Washington Post

"I was more than delighted to read "What the Stones Remember"' when it came out, although I was also astonished by it......It was almost as if a world previously viewed as hostile had come benevolently to life. 'What The Stones Remember' is a tough, lovely book, and it shows the person that was in there through all the desperate times -- a person who [has] now grown into his real skin." - Margaret Atwood (from The Washington Post, October 2005)

"Patrick Lane has written a memoir of heartbreaking struggle that manages to be beautiful and encouraging, finding anchorage in what was once called Creation, the natural world and its unstinting promise of renewal." - Thomas McGuane

"This is a record of recovery. Of a life, nearly lost, out of the dark into memory; of spiritual wholeness through a poet's attentiveness, season after season, to his garden--a real one. Only a writer of Patrick Lane's savage but forgiving vision could accomplish both in the same breath, and with such breathtaking beauty and power." - David Malouf

"This is the best book I have read in a decade. Lane's profound meditations on gardens and his own hard life are wise and deeply moving. Here is a classic memoir, wrought in prose as beautiful as the natural world that is his obsession and salvation." - Guy Vanderhaeghe

"[A] brave and beautifully written account, the sheer richness and beauty of the language is one of the great pleasures to be found in this book." - The Edmonton Journal

"Exquisite but terrifying. There are passages in these chapters like strains of Mozart." - Ottawa Citizen

"Lane's capacity for observing the details of nature on both grand and tint scales is remarkable, and his highly sensuous descriptions often transport us into haunting regions of the imagination." - The Globe & Mail

"There are many surprises in this book, but the biggest one is that Lane is a nature writer on a level with Annie Dillard, Getel Ehrlich, and Barry Lopez "Lane's writing is brilliant".This book is going to win many big prizes, and it will reward readers all the way through." - Winnipeg Free Press

"Patrick Lane's "There Is a Season" has earned rave reviews from critics - not to mention a regular spot on Quill and Quire's bestseller list. In a Quill and Quire starred review, Maureen Garvie called "There Is A Season" a marvel - a "powerfully honest and difficult book." - Quill and Quire

"Far, far from the world's sound and fury lies the still center of "There Is A Season: A Memoir in a Garden. This astonishing memoir, beautiful in its prose and terrifying in its honesty, is poet Patrick Lane's account of a year in his life and garden... Possibly the best-written book published in 2004, "There Is a Season" is a masterpiece." - MacLean's Magazine

"His lyric, seemingly effortless observations of living things drenched in light and water are mesmerizing. But like the hidden vodka bottles that surface in his garden like stones in a field, potent memories rupture the serene present." - Quill & Quire, starred review.

Click on the cover images to buy these books.

"You sit watching the hounds go leaving strange, their nails clicking swift the wooden floor as they slide like narrow smoke away."

-from "Go Leaving Strange"

Go Leaving Strange - the latest collection from award-winning poet Patrick Lane - is filled with poems that explore the darker side of human consciousness and desire. A man kills his own six-year-old child in "Weeds." An addict strives to keep ahead of death in "Smack." But amid this bleak landscape of pity and regret, there is also redemption and hope, life and beauty - in the wisteria seed that "shines between the folded legs of the pod, demure, waiting for spring . . . ," in the polished silver bowl of a spoon, or in the "blue flare" of an "old blacksmith tempering iron in dust and fire." And the poet's presence is everywhere as he seeks to find meaning in this existence.

"Haunting, ominous lines draw a bleak yet strikingly brilliant and intriguing picture....In "Weeds," Lane paints a picture reminiscent of T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland," and the terrible beauty of the coyote's flesh in "Coyote." - Winnipeg Free Press

"He achieves the kind of swelling grace you associate with Dylan Thomas...Whether it's a growing or a becoming, the often-calculated snarl of his past work has been replaced by a quieter yet more vibrant voice that is almost Taoist in its calm." - The Vancouver Sun

"The poet unfolds his imagery and description in a flowing, Whitman-esque manner…Harsh reality is created with striking clarity leaving the reader both awed and dismayed." - The Peak, Simon Fraser University

"...the most enduring quality of Lane's poetry -- the way he rides willingly into black territory to embrace the horrors there, just so they might set us free." - Event Magazine

"These poems are lamentations, meditations on what makes us and what breaks us. "Go Leaving Strange" is a book of coming to terms with the erosion of a mountain, yet if we hold a piece of it the way Lane does, we may see the mountain, its beauty being what perfects us in the moment." - Quill Canadian Poetry Magazine

Click here to buy this book at Amazon.ca.

Canada's best new poets, as selected by Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier.

Nine years ago, the first volume of Breathing Fire was published to rave reviews, introducing 31 of Canada's finest new poets to a wide and appreciative audience of readers. The anthology has since gone into several printings and become a basic text in schools and universities across the country. And the poets, including Michael Redhill, Karen Solie, Tim Bowling, Stephanie Bolster, Michael Crummey, Evelyn Lau, Sue Goyette and Carmine Starnino, have gone on to develop and captivate wide readerships of their own.

Today, a new and exciting generation of poets has come of age. Some, including Tammy Armstrong, Adam Dickinson, George Murray, Alison Pick, Shane Rhodes, matt robinson, Laisha Rosnau and Nathalie Stephens, have already put out books, and have even won or been shortlisted for major awards. Others with work just as compelling will be introduced for the first time. Breathing Fire 2 collects the best from all 33 of these writers, proudly presenting the next generation of Canada's poets to the world.

"As a gathering of poems, it is as precise as finely cut diamonds; as a look into the lives of others, it is canny and unsentimental. Each poet demands to be heard is isolation, and each poem bookended by silence."

"The clarity of their [the new poets] is so astute, the book begs to be read in small servings. Each poet demands to be heard in isolation, and each poem bookended by silence….Breathing Fire 2 breathes new life into Canada's poetry tradition." - The Globe & Mail

Click here to buy this book at Amazon.ca.

Edited by Lorna Crozier, and Patrick Lane

This book is a hard-hitting, courageous collection that explores the power of addiction.

"Addiction." In its earliest incarnation, the word meant devotion to a habit or pursuit. It has since come to mean the continued, compulsive use of a potentially dangerous substance or behaviour. What is this craving that comes to over-power all else? What is it like to be in the grip of an addiction, and how does it feel to get straight or sober? Editors Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane invited some of Canada's best writers to share their experiences with addiction, and the result is this audacious collection of powerful autobiographical stories.

This is a book about recovery, but it is much more than that: with its refreshing honesty, poignant soul-searching and dazzling writing, it is a potent concoction that will have readers hooked from the very first page.

Contributors to this collection include: Lorna Crozier, Peter Gzowski, Patrick Lane, Evelyn Lau, John Newlove, Stephen Reid, David Adams Richards, Lois Simmie, Sheri-D Wilson and Marnie Woodrow.

"A dozen contributors--all talented, some with recognizable names--offer us beautifully written, heartbreakingly poignant tours through 'the belly of the beast'. Tagging along, we learn something about pain and something about forgiveness." - The Vancouver Sun

"If you know someone who has successfully struggled with addiction and can use a little positive reinforcement, or someone who is struggling right now, give them this book. It will make a difference." - The Ottawa Citizen

"Poets Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane have assembled ten fiercely honest essays by such well-known Canadians as David Adams Richards, Evelyn Lau, Peter Gzowski and Stephen Reid...this book provides a shocking, mesmerizing peek into the private lives of some very public figures." - The Toronto Star

Click here to buy this book at Amazon.ca.