Poetry. Toying with the confessional, Phil Hall's WHITE PORCUPINE is a self-portrait of the artist from ages fifty to fifty-four. The creature of the title suggests (as in White Buffalo, White Whale, White Moose) the sacred primitive wild...though small...(a bit like poems); also, Death Itself (bugga-bugga); and snow rushing at the window of a moving car, years ago...tire-chains...fins; and greying hair, stubble chin; and honestly who doesn't bristle about getting old? and young St. Sebastian, that doofus...naked, glowing, multi-skewered; and a black and white group photo outside a one room school house in winter...(there's mom!) each student a quill, with its name underneath. The punchline: WHITE PORCUPINE is a long borderline-incomprehensible confessional poem about being miserable (oh boy!). Well, really it's about being a poet (even better!). Or, is it?

Author City: PERTH, ON CAN

Phil Hall's first small book, Eighteen Poems, was published by Cyanamid, the Canadian mining company, in Mexico City, in 1973. Among his many titles are: Old Enemy Juice (1988), The Unsaid (1992), and Hearthedral—A Folk-Hermetic (1996). In the early 80s, Phil was a member of the Vancouver Industrial Writers' Union, and also a member of the Vancouver Men Against Rape Collective. He has taught writing at York University, Ryerson Polytechnical University, Seneca College, George Brown College, and elsewhere. He has been poet-in-residence at Sage Hill Writing Experience (Saskatchewan), The Pierre Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon), and elsewhere. In 2007, BookThug published Phil's long poem WHITE PORCUPINE. Also in 2007, he and his wife, Ann, walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. His most recent books of poems are The Little Seamstress (2010) and KILLDEER (2011). He is a member of the Writers' Union of Canada, and lives near Perth, Ontario.