NEVER MORE THERE
Stephen Rowe
ISBN: 978-0-88971-239-3
Nightwood Editions, Fall 2009
How do we reconcile story with fact? What must one lose for the other to exist? In this debut collection, Rowe explores the nature of mythology and how it morphs in time to retain cultural and personal significance. Folk tales, supernatural creatures, family histories and personal elegies come together to expose the cohabitation of the dead and the living; the relationship between cold absence and stark presence.
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What people have to say:
“Rowe recasts the small tragedies of his life in Gander as soaring for-the-ages tragedy in what amounts to a memorable debut.”
—The Winnipeg Free Press
“Never More There is landscape poetry, in a broad and almost spiritual sense of the word. Read it slowly and deliberately….”
—youngpoets.ca
“There are some gorgeous lines scattered throughout (“coursing with the little heat a wound can bring”) and the second section contains a handful of fully realized poems, particularly the hypnotic “I Knew a Maid,” which has the timeless feel of folklore about it.”
—The Quill & Quire
“One of a new generation of Newfoundland poets who are inspired by the riches of their culture, Stephen Rowe casts a meditative eye on the world about him.”
—Mary Dalton
“Again and again while reading Never More There I was struck by arresting lines and images, by Stephen Rowe’s rigorous attention to the natural world and the world of words. Eloquent and passionate, Rowe is poet of real promise.”
—Michael Crummey
“This is why people read poetry: to savour something crisp, vivid and apt.”
—Newfoundland Quarterly
