In the City of Our Fathers

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

Don Kerr, the author of three previous collections of poetry (Talkin’
Basie, Going Places, and A New Improved Sky), has always been
wonderfully adept at sharing with his readers the Prairie experience:
its linear quality, its dust and sun, its cities. In the first part of
this volume, he returns to this landscape, but in a highly contemplative
way, using the Prairies as a device to introduce new ideas to his
audience—ideas colored with a delightful sense of humor.

Elsewhere in the book the poetry becomes less contemplative and assumes
a postmodernist quality, as Kerr comments on such “sacred” Canadian
institutions as the Canadian Art Club, the Ministry of Health, political
convention, and the groves of academe. With sly insights, he demystifies
and exposes the hypocrisy of his subjects. This collection is riddled
with perceptions that are simultaneously profound and ironic.