Moorings

Moorings, the fourteenth collection from award-winning poet Christopher Levenson, is a profound meditation on loss and ageing. “ It is an intricate business, growing old,” posits the speaker in the titular poem. “ Though I once had a photographic memory,” the poet reminisces, “ those negatives are lost, and will not develop.” Time and old age make room for loss, but so does greed— “ with time language disintegrates… lost to dementia … speech taken over by corporate empires, unique ways of feeling lost.… ” Moving from memories of childhood and artistic tributes to frustrated critiques of capitalism balanced with doses of lighthearted wordplay, these poems celebrate the colour of life, yet are wary of the darkness that can be found inside and around us. Pulling from a wide range of experience and memories but always anchored in the particular and the familiar, the poems in Moorings confront ageing and death head-on, while also celebrating the spiritual sustenance of friendship and memories in our steadily changing world.

Christopher Levenson was born in London, England, in 1934. After working internationally and studying in the US, he came to Canada in 1968 to teach English and creative writing at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is the author of thirteen books of poetry, most recently Small Talk (2022), and three chapbooks. He was the co-founder and first editor of Arc magazine. Levenson was the recipient of the inaugural Eric Gregory Award in 1960; the 1987 Archibald Lampman Award for Arriving at Night; and his collection Night Vision was short-listed for the Governor General's award in 2014.