Love on the Marsh

Love on the Marsh, a long poem in 100 stanzas, is described by Lochhead as "an extension of High Marsh Road" and "brother and sister to it". The diary-like entries, a form to which Lochhead has frequently returned over the years, can also be compared to his work in The Panic Field. By turns earthy and etherial, a pilgrimage through a landscape of grass and sky and tumultuous emotions, Love on the Marsh revisits the High Marsh Road with a new eye and finds in it the self-examining, self-discovering heart.

Douglas Lochhead, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a life-member of the League of Canadian Poets, was born in Guelph, Ontario in 1922, and served as an infantry and artillery officer in the Canadian Army during World War II. Lochhead's High Marsh Road was a finalist for the Governor-General's Award for Poetry, and in 2005 he received the Carlo Betocchi International Poetry Prize for High Marsh Road / La Strada di Tantramar. He is also a recipient of the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in English-language Literary Arts, and of many honorary degrees.