Available February 2006 ISBN 1-55380-036-2 978-155380-036-1 6 x 9 208 pp trade paper $16.95 Cdn $14.95 US POETRY

Speaking of Kevin Roberts, the Australian writer Nigel Krauth says, "Roberts takes the common man’s point of view and proves that humanity is still connected to the great turning of the universe." Certainly this "New and Selected" provides ample evidence of Roberts’ sense of connectedness, as he selects the best from his previous eleven books of poetry and shows that for over thirty years he has been one of the more powerful voices on the Canadian scene. Like Ted Hughes, Roberts frequently employs strong images of the countryside to explore the human condition – as in his earliest volume, Cariboo Fishing Notes (1973), where he works the trout streams of the Cariboo for what the art of fishing reveals of philosophical stances. Roberts also explores the work culture of Canada’s resource economy, as in Deep Line which tells of skippering a salmon trolling boat and "deep lining" the fish. In S’ney’mos, Roberts widens his themes to document in poetic terms the coal mining history of Nanaimo and the effect mining had on the aboriginal people of the area. Stonefish takes Roberts into new territory in Tahiti, with a sequence of poems based on the life of Gauguin. In Cobalt 3 (Ronsdale 0-921870-73-6), Roberts again opens up new territory when he offers a grim but blackly comic rendering of his own personal duel with cancer. With the addition of many new poems in Writing the Tides, Roberts shows that he is still at the top of his form.

"Kevin Roberts knows that beauty in poetry does not rest only in the image, but also in the energy of the poem. I read his poetry because he’s written the magic of deep water, and then gone further, exploring the line that floats between tragedy and living with attention." — Brian Brett

Kevin Roberts was born in Australia and immigrated to Canada in 1966 where he has taught Creative Writing for many years at Malaspina University College. In 1985 he was Writer-in Residence at Wattle Park College in Adelaide. He has read his work at both the Adelaide Festival of Arts and the Vancouver International Writers Festival. In addition to his eleven books of poetry, he has published two books of short stories and a novel, Tears in a Glass Eye. He presently lives by the sea in Lantzville on Vancouver Island.