Furs By Fred Wah (Grades 10+)

A celebrated yet underknown poet, novelist and short story writer, Fred Wah has been a major force in the poetics of western Canada since the early 1960s. He was the Poet Laureate of Canada from 2011-2013, and a founding member of the 1960s Vancouver-based radical poetry collective and newsletter known as TISH, along with Daphne Marlatt and George Bowering, among others. He has been honoured as an officer of the Order of Canada and a Governor General's Award for Poetry. In this poem, he writes of a very specific winter moment and context--a winter evening in the interior of BC.