Canadian Poetry; Wet Ink Books; Canada; Canadian Literature; publishing; www.WetInkBooks.com; Devour; Devour: Art & Lit Canada; Find all of our mags; “Devour” and “The Ambassador” –www.issuu.com/richardgrove1/stacks/bc11ecdd1e7646c4b1fac2bb7aef11ef
 

 

Don Gutteridge

 

 
Canadian Poetry; Hidden Brook Press; Canada; Canadian Literature; publishing; www.hiddenbrookpress.com; Devour; Devour: Art & Lit Canada; Find all of our mags; “Devour” and “The Ambassador” –www.issuu.com/richardgrove1/stacks/bc11ecdd1e7646c4b1fac2bb7aef11ef
 

 

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Simply but powerfully expressed, a visceral collection

Gutteridge writes beautifully about adolescent sexuality, old memories, loneliness, and love in his latest, a collection of free verse poems. The first few poems, indicates Guttridge’s keen interest in literature and memorializing, echoed in “Chaucer,” “Wordsworth,” “Byron,” and “Donne.”  He ably constructs a flowing personal narrative through memories of his childhood and youth as well as love, loss, and grief. Pain of losing a loved one to death and longing prove a powerful motif throughout. However, there is plentiful lightheartedness across the collection, too, most of it derived from memories of childhood and adolescence (“Unaltered”), while the poems such as “Nightmare,” “Glories,” “Two for Marybelle” delve into the lusts and passions of boyhood. These elegant, tender poems offer insight into love, recollections, and a life well-lived and enjoyed, while giving the reader plenty of depth and beauty to carry into their minds. With superbly crafted poems that engage the past, Gutteridge delivers another soulful collection that will stay on readers’ minds long after they turn the last page.”

SPR Reviews

 

Don Gutteridge is a poet whose work I frequently pick up whenever I come across it, and thankfully the fact that he is a wildly prolific author makes the wait in between short. The Home We Never Leave is a gorgeous anthology with verses that practically sing and a reverence to classical storytelling in the poetic form that takes its own personal shape, but retains the complexity it requires to push it above the parapet. Gutteridge is in a league of his own as a contemporary writer and this instalment is no exception. The standout to me is the piece “Bewildered,” partly because it reads as the author’s own desire to “compose a poem that would burst aloud like a blood-blister exploding in the bone, or float like a rose in leavening light, seasoned with similes and ept with metaphor…” and partly because I find it amusing that he is either blissfully unaware or in very real denial about how great the work tends to be. Overall, yet another fantastic addition to the growing Gutteridge catalogue.

Jaimie Michele, Award-Winning Novelist, for Readers’ Favorite

 

Studded with fine words, this collection will stay in the reader’s memory

 Gutteridge returns with this slender book of imaginative, evocative short poems. Some of these poems represent Guttridge’s longing for a life spent well with his loved ones. Some reflect an unpreserved romanticism tinged with nostalgia. Deep and poignant, the poems are easy to fall in love with. Poems about old, deep-rooted memories are here, unpretentious, melancholy, charming; about the days long gone, the careless boyhood times of leisure and play, about youthful lusts and passions and dreams and aspirations, about love and heartbreak, the poems that capture a time long-forgotten through old fashioned charm and whimsy.: Gutteridge’s style is easy to read, and the emotion is never abstract. And it is this simplicity of style that gives these poems their most dramatic values. What the poems in the collection say about childhood memories, life, love, loss, pain, and mortality is not particularly new, but Guttridge’s style is pure, graceful, meticulous, and memorable, and his words seem to come straight from the heart. But most of all, here is a poet who uses vivid imagery and form to contain his central theme of love and grief. Marvellous.

The Prairies Book Reviews

 

 
Canadian Poetry; Wet Ink Books; Canada; Canadian Literature; publishing; www.WetInkBooks.com; Devour; Devour: Art & Lit Canada; Find all of our mags; “Devour” and “The Ambassador” –www.issuu.com/richardgrove1/stacks/bc11ecdd1e7646c4b1fac2bb7aef11ef