Autodidactic
Published on 15. September 1997
978-1-77131-171-7 (ISBN)
Description
Shortlisted for the 1998 Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry
Don Kerr's fifth poetry collection is a verbal joyride, an exuberant celebration of a book: a celebration of mountains and plains, of growing up and of being young, of being alive in the present moment and absorbing the feel of the road through the palms of your hands on the wheel. Autodidactic represents an erotics of the everyday, a tribute to place (and movement) and to family (and friends). This is not to say that Kerr sentimentalizes the ordinary, but rather that by examining it in the bright prairie sunlight, he is able to reveal its true extraordinariness. The deep-felt humour that is in many of the poems here does not arise from gilding events with comedy, but from the poet's seeing and drawing out of events what is truly and inherently comic within them. In this book Kerr is able to demonstrate the many shades of his voice and the many facets of his craft.
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Don Kerr is the author of five books of poetry, four full-length plays on CBC Radio and The Fringe (including The Smoking Cabaret), a short fiction collection and a non-fiction book on the history of the city of Saskatoon. An editor of note as well, he has edited a comprehensive book of Anne Szumigalski's poetry. He lives in Saskatoon.
