First Light, Last Lightby Glen SorestadPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Brandon Fick$19.99 ISBN 9781998273461 First Light, Last Light is a fitting title for a poetry collection that concerns itself with the beginning and end of human life, lost and recovered memories, the rhythmic cycle of the seasons, and glimpses of natural life in the early dawn of spring or the cold, shadowy dusk of winter. Glen Sorestad, one of Saskatchewan’s elder literary statesman, its first Poet Laureate, and co-founder of Thistledown Press, has compiled a book without pretension. Many of Sorestad’s poems are written from personal experience, meditating on his parents, brother, or children, a bulldozed childhood farm and disappeared dog, or more recently, medical appointments and the strange rituals of the pandemic. He also proves to be a keen observer of birds. All of this adds up to a satisfying portrait of a man. In “Part One: The Human Touch,” Sorestad fluctuates between poeticizing contemporary life and excavating the past, with an emphasis on the latter. In fact, there is a poem titled “Excavation: Mount Pleasant Public School,” provoked by a photo, as a number are in this section. This 1940s school in Vancouver “long gone to wrecking ball…

What We Miss by Glen Sorestad Published by Thistledown Press Review by Andréa Ledding $17.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-75-1 Glen Sorestad, first Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan, infuses his twentieth book of poetry with a strong sense of place combined with gentle wonder. Readers are guided through a landscape both urban and rural, populated with memory, observation, humanity, and the inanimate – personable postcards from the everyday, to be savoured page by page. The book is like a walk with a longstanding companion, sharing thoughtful interior and exterior observations. Many poems contain first-person narrative, creating a tone of intimacy – poem as memoir, poet as friend and mentor , poetry as a fleeting encounter on a remote trail. Divided into three sections, each grouping begins with a quote from another author or public persona, and a journey through season, nature, weather, and a cast of companions – from a robin with “gaudy orange breast/spinning a small sun at us” to “umbrella sky a boundless blue” above, to an old man and his dog encountered daily in a shared walking path ritual. Of particular delight is the third and final section which powerfully mines poetic memory – decades-past childhood in rural Saskatchewan brought effectively…