PUBLISHED in November 2023 by THE ST. THOMAS POETRY SERIES
David Waltner-Toews, The Gravity of Love
David Waltner-Toews has published more than twenty books, including poetry, fiction and popular science. His most recent works include A Conspiracy of Chickens (Wolsak & Wynn, 2022) and On Pandemics: From Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus(Greystone, 2020). His work has been translated into German, French, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. He is an Officer in the Order of Canada, which cited him “for his leadership and expertise in ecosystem approaches to health, and for supporting development worldwide.” His previous books of poetry include The Fat Lady Struck Dumb (Brick Books, 2000) and The Impossible Uprooting (McClelland & Stewart, 1995).
Order by emailing stthomaspoetryseries@gmail.com
Payments may be made by E-transfer, Paypal, or cheque. (Cheques should be made payable to The St. Thomas Poetry Series and mailed to St. Thomas’s Church, 383 Huron Street, Toronto ON M5S 2G3.)
The cost is $20 per copy plus shipping costs, usually $6.50 for a single copy in Canada.
Launched on Saturday, November 18 at 7:30 pm at St. Thomas’s Church, together with Alice Major of Edmonton. Details below.
In this boldly textured portrait of “life’s wondrous ache,” David Waltner-Toews offers his reader an exploration – at once urgent and lyrical – of the complicated connections among all living things. A veterinary epidemiologist whose profound commitment to ecosystem health has taken him many times around the world’s “furrowed brow,” Waltner-Toews provides, alongside a compelling meditation on how we lost the earth, a celebration of “the fierce desire” of life itself. “Sing to me of what is lost,” the poet urges, while expressing – in mesmerizing cadences – gratitude for beauty and grace. (Hildi Froese Tiessen, Conrad Grebel UC)
The Gravity of Love spans history, species, and the cosmos in pursuit of what it means to create and connect, to be of use and to be whole. David Waltner-Toews draws on an array of allusions from Darwin to Milton to Whitman as he considers what humans, we “scatterlings / and word scavengers,” might say in the face of “epidemics, ecological collapse, the end of the world.” Irreverently and tenderly, this collection tips us “topsy-turvy / into the toppled world’s embrace” with poems that insist, again and again: “I am here.” (Sarah Ens, The World Is Mostly Sky and Flyway)
The St. Thomas Poetry Series: Poetry Reading and Book Launch
Waltner-Toews was introduced by Hildi Froese Tiessen (retired from Conrad Grebel UC, University of Waterloo), pioneering scholar of Mennonite literature in Canada.
Alice Major of Edmonton also read and her new book Knife on Stone (Turnstone Press) received its Toronto launch. Alice has published twelve collections of poetry, was Edmonton’s first poet laureate (2005-07) and is a Past President of the League of Canadian Poets and Past President of the Writers Guild of Alberta. Her early years were in Scotland near Glasgow. After her family came to Canada when she was eight years of age, she lived in Toronto and later went west to work as a reporter in Williams Lake, British Columbia. She has been an active supporter of the arts and writing community, and she has received many awards, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. Alice was introduced by poet and publisher (Aeolus House) Allan Briesmaster.
Here is the link to the live-streaming of the launch on YouTube:
