Nota Bene: A Journey follows, in a set of 71 “suites,” an intense relationship between its author and an astonishing woman artist, a union increasingly identified in this long serial poem with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The work is a major shift in direction for Stephen Bett, a poet known mainly for his sassy, satiric irreverence about political correctness and pop culture. Here we see, to put it mildly, a far more nakedly personal voice, one frequently seared with anguish and despair, while surely attempting to retain the poet’s customary edginess to charge and propel his language beyond a hint of the mere sentimental or cliched.

Stephen Bett has had five previous books of poetry published, including Cruise Control, High-Maintenance (both Ekstasis Editions) and Lucy Kent and other poems (Longspoon Press)—along with a recent chapbook, High Design Refit (Greenboathouse Books), and his work has also appeared in over seventy journals in Canada, the U.S., England, Australia and Finland, as well as in two anthologies, and on radio. He is a member of the English Department at Langara College in Vancouver, and lives with his wife and two children in Deep Cove.