Inklings: Poems of the Point and Beyond

If we doubt importance, if we despair over loss, if we lament the passage of time without purpose, if we feel ourselves fading away from the failure to realize the promise of our best selves, if we know that youth is fleeting and old age involves in Layton’s words “the inescapable lousiness of growing old,” we might find solace and consolation and hope in the poems of Don Gutteridge. He remembers the full vigour of coltish desire in youth, and he celebrates the beauty of having found lifelong love.

– John B. Lee
Poet Laureate of the city Brantford in perpetuity,
Poet Laureate of Norfolk County for life

On sizzling summer nights

boys budding and girls

sudden with breasts

play hide-and-go-seek

in the juddering shadows
under the lascivious light
of a June moon: too
soon to be blessed by
some tremulous touch,

they wait for the “all free” call

and come running in side-

ways tandem towards

Mara’s lamp and what
is just beginning to daze

and delight.

The first striking thing to note about Inklings: Poems of the Point and Beyond is the depth of its images, which pull readers into each succinct poem like a snapshot captures the eye with colourful immediacy. These are the moments that define our lives past, present, and future. As the camera captures the image in its seconds of glory before it fades or transforms, so Inklings captures those connections in life and family before they evolve into something different, bringing free verse poetry readers along for a ride through metaphor and experience.

Diane Donovan, senior reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Description

Don Gutteridge was born in Sarnia, Ontario and raised in the nearby village of Point Edward. He graduated from Western University with an Honours English degree and taught high school for seven years before moving to Western’s Faculty of Education. There he taught English Methods for twenty-five years. He is the author of more than fifty books: poetry, fiction and scholarly works in educational theory and practice. In 1970 he won The UWO President’s Medal for his poem “Death at Quebec.” His collection Coppermine was a finalist for the 1973 Governor General’s Award. He is currently Professor Emeritus and lives in London Ontario with his wife Anne.