Heart Residence

A landmark collection from one of Canada’s literary icons, and the founder of House of Anansi Press, Heart Residence collects for the first time work from all corners of Dennis Lee’s extraordinary career.

This book is an exhilarating revelation. No other poet in Canada has the depth and range of Dennis Lee — jazzman, jester, and metaphysician, hardball political thinker and passionate lover, he has been publishing poems for fifty years. His first book, Kingdom of Absence, published in 1967, was the founding publication of House of Anansi Press. Since then Lee has produced work across the poetic spectrum, from nursery rhymes and skipping songs to uncompromising moral introspection to full-tilt love songs, plangent psalms, and ecstatic, solitary prayer.

There are poets’ poets and people’s poets. And then there are those few who are neither and both: the few who become, over time, part of the warp and weft of their culture. Heart Residence collects, for the first time, work from all corners of this extraordinary career. In its verve and variety, this is a one-of-a-kind collection.