In Songs from the Hive, David Watmough’s third volume of sonnets, memories and reflections fuse into time past and time to come. Following Coming Down the Pike and Eyes & Ears on Boundary Bay, Watmough enlarges his thematic approach to express evidence of a life well-lived and rich with deepening thought. His language is incantatory and exact, finding within a baroque sensibility an utterance that is both classical and contemporary. Primarily known as a writer of chiselled prose, Watmough proves himself a consummate craftsman of the sonnet form and a poet of exceptional sensitivity and depth. Watmough’s sonnets illuminate the dark places of the heart and offer greater sanguine wisdom and deeper questioning of our residence on earth. Writing after the loss of a long-time partner, he contemplates the sensuality of being and the thin edge of mortality. David Watmough has found within the confines of the fourteen-line sonnet the freedom to explore his complicated joys and the turbulent difficulties of growing old, but feeling young. In his twentieth published book, Watmough celebrates a vibrant kaleidescope of experience in lyrics both profound and elemental. In its economy of language Songs from the Hive will extend experience and delight the senses.

A naturalized Canadian, David Watmough has been shaped and nourished by a Cornish background as well by years in London, Paris, New York and San Francisco. All his novels, short stories, plays and poems, however, have been written on Canada’s west coast during the past 45 years.