Winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry
Continuing his defiance of the “poetry police,” Berzensky has smuggled into the world a new collection of poems that insist on the subversive power of the imagination to set us free. Against the tyranny and despair of the twentieth-century, he offers light and liberation, for in this book of variations, the moment of birth “cancels death forever,” and “there are always/new holes in the air/for us to leap through.”
About the Author
Steven Michael Berzensky, also known as Mick Burrs, came to Canada from California in 1965. Berzensky was a poet, editor, teacher, and songwriter. He spent many years living in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and won the 1998 Saskatchewan Book Award for Variations on the Birth of Jacob. Berzensky’s other books included Dark Halo, The Blue Pools of Paradise, The Waking Image Bedside Companion, and Moving in from Paradise. He also served as editor of Grain magazine for several years and as Yorkton’s first writer-in-residence. Mick died in 2021.
