Climbing Knocknarea is Lesley Choyce’s 92nd book. Included are poems about wonder and loss, simplicity and transcendence, grief and joy, history and imagination, hurt and happiness as well as the multitude of ordinary everyday things that shape our lives. The travel poems take the reader to Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii, Dublin and Donegal, Santa Cruz and San Francisco, the Bay of Fundy and Bulgaria, Aberdeenshire and Amalfi, Paris and Rome, New Jersey and Nova Scotia. Many of these poems reflect how the poem itself can take on a personality and a life of its own, each attempting in its own way to become a living entity possible to leap off the page and become part of the reader’s life.

Lesley Choyce is the author of over ninety books of literary fiction, short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction and young adult novels. He runs Pottersfield Press and has worked as editor with a wide range of Canadian authors. He has edited a number of literary anthologies and hosted several television shows over the years. Choyce has taught Creative Writing at Dalhousie and other universities for over thirty years and has acted as mentor to many emerging writers during that time. He has won The Dartmouth Book Award, The Atlantic Poetry Prize and The Ann Connor Brimer Award. He has also been shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal, The White Pine Award, The Hackmatack Award, The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award and The Governor General’s Award. He surfs year round in the North Atlantic.