the trick of staying and leaving

From Governor General’s Award-winning poet David Zieroth comes a new collection about history, connections and travels in Europe.

Impromptu English lessons in a North Vancouver coffee shop, and subsequent trips to Bratislava, bring the speaker in these poems a warmer appreciation of friends and family as well as a wider vision of the interplay of folklore and culture, and of the human-made and natural world. These poems speak of affections that cross borders—geographical, historical and interpersonal—and that show us ways to love each other. Here are villages, people and landscapes in Slovakia, a post-Communist country with a complicated past and present, where Zieroth seeks what unites us across barriers. He brings this deeper sense of connection home with him, even when a part of his new sense of self and others lingers along the Danube.