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AVAILABLE
978-1-55017-148-8 · 1-55017-148-8
$16.95 · Paperback
6 x 9 · 152 pp · 1996
Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets
Selected Poems 1962-1996
by Al Purdy, edited by Sam Solecki
afterword by Al Purdy

The definitive Al Purdy selected.
Finalist for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2006!

A selection of poems by the man described by the Globe & Mail as "the greatest of our poets." Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets includes three decades' worth of thought-provoking work, including poems from the Governor-General's Award-winning The Cariboo Horses to Naked with Summer in Your Mouth.

Purdy personally made this selection, assisted by Sam Solecki, the editor of Starting from Ameliasburgh: The Collected Prose of Al Purdy. In these poems, Purdy ponders the remains of a Native village; encounters Fidel Castro in Revolutionary Square; curses a noisy cellmate in the drunk tank; and marvels at the "combination of ballet and murder" known as hockey, all in the author’s inimitable man-on-the-street style.

Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets is destined to become the standard Purdy poetry volume for many years to come.