Icemen / Stoneghosts

James Thurgood

6 X 9 inches, 96 pages

'WRITING NORTH' is how this book might best be described. The poems in this collection are strong of place—the Ungava region of Québec—but the persons whose stories unfold are, for the most part, fictitious. And compelling for both their accurate description and their evocations of feelings that stir within each of our personal garrisons.

they don't speak English




I plod through plush snow


          to mid lake


where at a fishing-hole


          their twelve-year-old daughter


          —perfect face wreathed in foxfur—


reclines on an elbow


          like Cleopatra


one lazy mittened hand


          working a jigger



at her feet

          two fish frozen


                             drops of blood


                    on the snow

James Thurgood

Author

Originally from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, James Thurgood has lived and taught on Indian reservations in the far north for over a decade. Thurgood is an accomplished entertainer, having pioneered busking in Halifax in the late seventies and early eighties, and an accomplished folk and country singer, having been part of the so-called "Irish" trio, Bag o' Hammers, in the maritimes, and part of the musical duo, Two for the Road, with Metis singer George Anderson, in Manitoba.