Bad Habits

Overview

Bad Habits is a new collection of poems by Fraser Sutherland, a self-described curmudgeon and contrarian, realist and first and foremost — a counterpuncher. Sutherland writes: "Poetry can't de-feat ongoing ignorance, repetitive wrong-doing, physical deterioration nor persona extinction. But to say a few meaningful words about being in the world in the face of infinity and eternity – well, that's something."

Reviews

His poems are so simple that you could retell them, but when you retell them you realize that you have violated the poetry. Even when they require an intellectual effort to be deciphered, you are ashamed to retell them, because you know that the poet wouldn't inhabit his poem anymore. And Sutherland inhabits all his poems." —Goran Simic, author of Sunrise in the Eyes of a Snowman

"I think these are excellent poems, the writing of a well-travelled well-read man, who wanted to be influenced by everyone he meets and all he reads. They will not instruct you how to think and feel; they allow you to do that for yourself." —Al Purdy, Introduction to Madwomen (Black Moss, 1978)

Author Biography

Fraser Sutherland has been a freelance writer, reporter and staff writer for major newspapers and magazine, including the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Wall Street Journal, Quill & Quire, and Books in Canada. He is widely admired as a critic and editor. A former Writer-in-Residence at the University of Edinburgh, for three years he was a visiting professor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China. He lives in Toronto, Canada.