Poems by John Carroll

November 1999

John Carroll is well known in Canada as a playwright and actor, but less so as a poet. His poems are vivid and affecting, revealing an interior, domestic world of childhood and parenthood, and the interplay between them. As a parent, he writes of his sons:

There is a distance in the clouds tonight
which makes me ache for my two boys
who are some distance up the coast
beneath a sky that must be part of this ...

and as a son, he writes of his father:

Father, sometimes you are almost sitting there
next to me
on the glider, in the electric air ...
we sit
hear the thunder ...
my head in your lap
your hand on my back
we rock
without disturbing the shattering of sky
our love is without seam

Carroll’s poems result from minute observation by a man both emotionally direct and ironic, whose language flicks deftly from lyric to demotic. He is good company, and a reliable guide.

Text hand set in 14pt. Garamont and printed in dark green and black on Somerset Book Laid, sewn into covers with labelled wraps of green Japanese Obonai hand made. The title page features a tipped print reproduced from a collage by Janet Downey.
10 by 6 ½ inches [254 by 152 mm]
60 pages. 125 copies.
C$75

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