Letters from the Equator

C.H. Gervais

6 X 9 inches, 80 pages

IN THESE LETTERS, C.H. Gervais writes from the heart. His epistolary prose-poems to saints, authors, family members and friends speak gently of love, faith, loss and longing. Wistful and playful, Gervais writes as one who knows that the poet "reshapes a misshapen world in the dark corners of the night."

Letters from the Equator ranges around the world in scope and location. Composed in Nicaragua, Peru, Germany, France, Italy, the United States, and Canada, these exquisite contemplations celebrate life's triumphs over death, love's over hate, and the heart's over the soul of the Machine. Slightly exotic, always evocative, Letters from the Equator contains a series of near-elegies on the state of humanity as the twenty-first century was approaching.

This book reaffirms the skill and sensitivity of one of Canada's finest poets.

The cab driver in Managua drives a red Chevy Impala ... I tell him about my own big blue whale, all fiberglass & white walls, made by GM in sweaty summer afternoons. It swims thru Motown's streets, beleaguered, alone. A unique species. Twice & three times as large as others. A titanic beast. Rusting with true blue American pride. I feel a little like you: swallowed up by her & steering her into ghettos alive with baseball & unemployment. Somehow a sign of hope here, of what was afloat for all time, a familiar ghost reminding people of once-powerful arrogance, of affluence, of glory, from the age of Korea & Vietnam ... Alive & swimming into your veins, America.

C.H. (Marty) Gervais

Author

Marty Gervais was born in Windsor and grew up in Bracebridge. He received a BA from University of Guelph and an MA in creative writing from University of Windsor, where he studied under Morley Callaghan. The recipient of numerous journalism awards in his lengthy career as a journalist at The Windsor Star, and lauded for his book The Rumrunners, a history of Prohibition in Canada, Gervais has also won recognition for his creative writing. With Autobiographies he was runner-up in the Milton Acorn Memorial People's Poetry competition in 1989.