Burritt's Rapids and Beyond

n BURRITT’S RAPIDS AND BEYOND, “whatever flows, remains.” From Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal, and rural Ontario, Louis Contant considers his place in the world. Fireflies, whip-poor-wills, squirrels, dragonflies, waterfalls, and the soulful notes of a sonata drift through these meditations on nature, spirituality, writing, love, family, friendship, and music. Louis’ poems inhabit sorrow and suffering yet are rich with praise, delighting in the comforts and joys of ritual and routine alongside brevity and ephemera. Whether considering the “alpine range” of Auden’s contributions to literature, the solitude of the poet, the “molded contours” of friendship, the possibility of life on other planets, or the cedar cottage sweetness of home, Louis reminds us that “what really matters is happening all the time / without us.”

With humour, wit, and humbleness, Louis confronts his own mortality and celebrates human connection in an age of technology and social unrest. Playful rhymes and uncompromising narratives are accompanied by the poet’s feisty resilience and tuneful undercurrents of grace.

Published posthumously, and compiled and contextualized by the poet’s wife, Wilma Brown, Burritt’s Rapids and Beyond showcases and pays tribute to the life of one wise and curious man. At its heart, this book asks what it means to truly belong to this world, to live in it with pleasure and reverence, trying not to step on any wildflowers.