From Where the Trees Are Standing in the

From the hunt for salmon off BC's coast to a pile of bones in the prairie dust, McCallum is guided on his journeys by the ghosts of Northrop Frye, Margaret Avison, and Samuel de Champlain, along with lovers, gods and, at the deepest level, the poet's dead father. From the names of the dying to the shifting names we form for the land itself, Paddy McCallum speaks intimately with them, charting "the paths across your face/that each of us follows/to find you" into that moment in time and space "where one turns/eternally to a marker, while another/brushes snow from his name."