| The Anachronicles Contributor(s): McWhirter, George (Author) |
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ISBN: 1553800540 ISBN-13: 9781553800545 Publisher: Ronsdale Press OUR PRICE: $14.36 Product Type: Paperback Published: April 2008 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Poetry | Canadian - Poetry | American - General |
| Dewey: 811.54 |
| Physical Information: 0.33" H x 6.31" W x 9.02" (0.45 lbs) 100 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Canadian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Anachronicles is a collection of unusually rich poems that are both proto-and post-colonial. The title itself - melding the two words 'anachronism'and 'chronicle' - points to how the poems explore events and exchanges in one place from two points in time. The place itself is La Audiencia Beach in Mexico. Instead of portraying history from the present looking backwards, McWhirter has the past looking forward to foresee and comment on what is to happen as a result of the early exploration. Here Hernan Cortés and his Lieutenant-Conqueror of Colima, Sandoval, appraise the antics of Bo Derek and other stars as they make the movie 10 - on the same beach where four hundred years earlier their crews built three brigantines to explore what is now called the Sea of Cortez. The verse-logs then follow explorer Don Caamano and his successors up the Pacific Coast to where John McKay (aka Sean McKoy), an Irishman, was left to recuperate from a sickness among the Nootka-Nuu-chah-nulth on Vancouver Island. The final poem, "Hops," retells the Irish legend of the goddess Liadan and the poet Cuirithir, whose voices travel to one another from Canada and Ireland. The dialogue travels from the end of the last millennium to the 1950s, highlighting their present-day divided Christian-pagan roles as mortal man and woman in holy orders. |
Contributor Bio(s): McWhirter, George: - George McWhirter is the author and translator of 25 books. His Catalan Poems shared the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972 with Chinua Achebe. He has translated two Mexican poets, Gabriel Zaid and Homero Aridjis, and has also won the F.R. Scott Prize for Translation with The Selected Poems of JosZ Emilio Pacheco. For Cage, his novel set in Tetelcingo, he was awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Ovid in Saskatchewan, an earlier anachronicle, was awarded the Canadian Poetry Chapbook prize by the League of Canadian Poets in 1998. Presently, he serves as Vancouver's inaugural Poet Laureate. |