Year Zero

About the Author Brian Henderson is the author of 11 collections of poetry, the latest ofwhich is [OR] from Talonbooks. NerveLanguage (Pedlar Press) was a finalist for the Governor General's Award andSharawadji (Brick Books),was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry, about which the judges wrote:"Sharawadji is an exceptionally original, linguistically kinetic exploration contain[ing] stunning imagery, metaphors and language. Tracking imaginative possibilities anchored by a profoundly engaged heart and mind, Henderson's is a rare voice."He is thex-director of WLUPress Product Description Year Zero is the time of hushed beginnings and endings, the place of naming and unnaming, where language, strange to itself, tiptoes along songlines as though following passages of Koto music. In Brian Henderson's poetry, poised and listening on this hinge of creativity, ontological wonder is informed by awareness of the paradoxes at the heart of language, that language wants you for itself, and that what is named, falls. Whether focusing on the dying of a parent or fellow poet, or on the coming-to-be of a child, this poetry is alive with the truth that "The dead burn through us/ the not yet born.""What a wonderful book this is! Henderson tells the old story how dear ones die, and new lives come to be. In a world that's dense, opaque, yet lit with random hints of something being uttered. The result is a marvel of passionate, glancing eloquence. I wanted it never to end." --Dennis Lee