The Hole in the Wall by Peter McEwen

The Hole in the Wall

Peter McEwen

Imagine Stephen Leacock behind the easel of Tom Thomson and you’ll approach Peter McEwen’s distinctive poetic “geopsyche.” Whether writing about a hockey fight, or recording the reactions to the cancellation of the spring bear hunt, whether recasting folk tales or painting windswept, white pine lyrics on love and lost time, Peter McEwen’s voice has a consistently natural, consistently thoughtful pulse. While definitely regional, his region is one we all share, at least at times. Broadly accessible, and often laced with humour and satire, his poetry is intellectually and emotionally challenging.

“Peter McEwen’s The Hole in the Wall marks the debut collection of a voice long overdue to be heard. In these wide-ranging and superbly controlled poems, McEwen takes us into the heart of the Canadian Shield landscape and the mystical realms of the Georgian Bay waterway and islands with a passion and precision that is both revealing and engaging. Here is a poet who cares deeply for his art and the beauty that words can create as they forge a landscape.”—Bruce Meyer

“In this debut volume, Peter McEwen showcases his skill at word play and his sharp eye for image in poems, both lyrical and narrative, elegiac and sardonic, that express his love of lakes and the sea and his fondness for cottage country encounters with waterfowl as well as with snakes and bears and frogs and human characters who share their environment. Readers will also delight in his ekphrastic poems and his wry reflections on urban detritus.”—Ruth Roach Pierson, Professor Emerita, Author of Where No Window Was (2002) and Aide-Mémoire (2007)

Now Available! 

Book Details

October, 2008
ISBN 978-1-896350-31-8
54pp. softcover
Price $14.00

About the Author

Peter McEwen lives in Oro-Medonte, near Coldwater Ontario, for the winter months, but spends nearly half the year at his island camp in the middle of Parry Sound, just through the “hole-in-the-wall.” Though he is published in a variety of magazines, this is his first collection.