Ultimate Midnight

David E. Kemp is chair of the Drama Department at Queen’s University
and author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Judith Fitzgerald is the author of more than a dozen collections of
poetry (including two for children). In 1986, she received a Writers
Choice Award for her poetry collection Given Names, while Rapturous
Chronicles earned her a Governor General’s Award nomination in 1991.

This collection of poetry and prose poems seeks to explore a
postapocalyptic universe from the perspective of both survivor and
victim. These are not comforting poems, but the effort they demand from
the reader is unquestionably worthwhile. Fitzgerald is a brilliant and
pyrotechnic linguist, capable of a verbal dexterity that leaves one
breathless with admiration.

The landscape of the poetry is bleak. Disease and death, the loss of
self-esteem, the cult of chaos, the rise of technology and the threat it
poses to our individuality may not make for easy reading, but we need
voices like Fitzgerald’s to sound a warning. Ultimately, her poetry
reaffirms our humanity.