Poet Roo Borson to speak at Dec. 3 Canadian Writers in Person lecture

York University’s Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series will feature poet Roo Borson on Dec. 3, who will read from her latest collection of poetry, Cardinal in the Eastern White Cedar.

The series features 11 authors who will present their work, answer questions and sign books. Canadian Writers in Person is a for-credit course for students. It is also a free-admission event for members of the public. All readings take place at 7 p.m. on select Tuesday evenings in 206 Accolade West Building, Keele Campus.

Borson has published 13 previous books of poems, including Rain; road; an open boat and Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, winner of the Governor General’s Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. She has also won awards for her essays. With Kim Maltman, she writes and translates collaboratively under the pen name Baziju. She lives in Toronto.

After Borson’s two previous collections set the seasons in motion, focusing the poet’s mind on time, mortality, transience and absence, Cardinal in the Eastern White Cedar completes the triptych. From the glittering, classically rendered image to a freighted, lucid, narrative line, Borson’s voice can shift and refract while holding true to the momentary facts of the shifting, given world. Here, the distant past collides with the near future, the present opens suddenly into another age and friendship becomes the measure of time’s salience. These poems depict what vanishes, the various modest homes where half-remembered lives all flow toward their common end.

Other presentations scheduled in this series are: