Like its totem creature, the poems in Octopus are canny, slippery and metamorphic.

As apt to channel the confessionalism of Anne Sexton as the red-in-tooth-and-claw nature poetry of Ted Hughes, Patrick Warner’s voice ranges freely from the colloquial to the baroque.

Over the past 15 years, by harbouring and honouring such fraught tensions, Mr. Warner, special collections librarian at the Queen Elizabeth II Library,  has been building one of the most taut and original bodies of work in Canadian literature.

In Octopus we have him at his best.

Published by Biblioasis.