Man of the Miramichi

After eighteen books of fiction and four of non-fiction, David Adams Richards has published his second collection of essays. Richards, whose Mercy among the Children won the Giller Prize in 2000, has put together twenty-eight essays, in two blocks, some culled from as far back as thirty-five years ago. Some have previously appeared in newspapers and other periodicals, while others are published for the first time.

A batch of poems serves as a bridge between the two blocks. For the most part, the poetry is slight, though it conveys a strong sense of place. Richards, a fan of the late Alden Nowlan, a fellow Maritime poet, does offer a succinct octet (“Betrayal”) and an ironic, didactic poem (“The Man Who Loves My Children”), about a writer whose only compassion for children and people in pain is found in his fiction, not in his real life. There is a poem about travel, a prosaic one about networking, a platform poem in honour of Milton Acorn, and some...