10/9/19 Book talk by Professor Brent MacLaine on his new collection of Poems, Prometheus Reconsiders Fire

Flier

912 Sproul Hall

The Department of Comparative Literature hopes that you will be able to attend a book talk by Professor Brent MacLaine on his new collection of Poems, Prometheus Reconsiders Fire

Wednesday, October 9th, 2019
4:10 PM
912 Sproul Hall
Pizza will be served

In his new collection of poems, Prometheus Reconsiders Fire (Acorn Press), PEI poet Brent MacLaine undertakes an exploration of fire. The prefatory title poem establishes Prometheus as the poet’s persona, a voice that is dedicated to the reconsideration of fire in both its benevolent and malevolent aspects. Formal and elegant, Prometheus plots a trajectory between the classical and the local, a bearing that will be familiar to readers of MacLaine’s earlier work Athena Becomes a Swallow. Wide-ranging in its geography, the new book is wrapped ’round by “The Fire Hall Suite” that begins and ends the book. These are poems that respond to the “drive-by wisdom” created by the anonymous “Sign Person” who speaks to the local community by way of  the Fire Hall’s roadside sign. Framed by the “Suite,” the poems of Prometheus move between city and country.

“A naturalist in the city, MacLaine brings to the urban environment the acutely observing eye that has always characterized his Island nature poems. MacLaine’s imagery, both urban and rural, is remarkable, and no other Canadian poet is quite as capable as MacLaine is in marrying the formal and the colloquial.”—Anne Compton, Governor General Award-Winning Poet.

Brent MacLaine is Professor Emeritus and a 3M Teaching Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Prince Edward Island. He was born and grew up in the rural community of Rice Point, PEI, to which he returned after teaching at universities in Vancouver, Edmonton, China, and Singapore. He has published four volumes of poetry, Wind and Root (Vehicule 2000), These Fields Were Rivers (Goose Lane 2004), Shades of Green (Acorn 2008), and Athena Becomes a Swallow (2009). He has also edited with Hugh MacDonald Landmarks: an Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land (Acorn 2001). Brent MacLaine's awards for poetry include a League of Canadian Poets prize, the Prince Edward Island Book Award, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize (for Shades of Green).