Ghost in the Gears

Wayne Ray is president of the Canadian Poetry Association and author of
Giants of the North.

Howard White writes for the “man / woman-in-the-street majority.”
His specialty is the everyday event that we all know, see, and hear in
our workday lives. He talks about the common man in “Scabby Mackay”:
“Sitting in his little stove-oil-soaked floatshack / he not too
apologetically called / ‘The black hole of Calcutta’ / swilling
greased coffee and scratching fleas / he summed it all up: Canadians, he
said / were the stupidest people in the world.” He leads us into
familiar lives in “Invisible Kid”: “The book was full of wrong
names for almost everything / but when I asked Mum it turned out they
weren’t / wrong, they were names they used in the place / books come
from, the big cities, far away. ... / Dick and Jane never wore gumboots
or lifejackets like me / and my sister did.” Were it not for the
glaring typos within the first 16 pages, the seeming lack of
proofreading, and inconsistent punctuation throughout, I would recommend
this book for the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award.