Running Late - New & Selected Poems

“His poems are forceful and disturbing.” - CANADIAN FORUM

“At the top of his form, Harvey is a true poet: he adds, in certain brief, magically elusive moments another dimension to reality.” - THE GLOBE & MAIL

Running Late marks the re-emergence of a truly unique and important voice in Canadian poetry, bringing together selected earlier works by Rolf Harvey along with a captivating set of new work. Harvey was a key member of the Canadian ​poetry scene in the 1960s and ‘70s. He studied under Irving Layton, Maurice Elliott, and D.E.S. Maxwell while working closely with Al Purdy, George Johnston and others. Harvey’s first collection of poems, The Perfect Suicide, was published in 1972 by New Press and hailed as a “forceful, rhetorical and highly idiosyncratic collection” [John Bemrose, Toronto Star]. This was followed by Getting By (Oasis Press, 1979) and Out From Under (Oasis Press, 1984), which was edited by Irving Layton. Harvey’s absence from the world of poetry since the mid-1980s owes much to his distinguished career in film and television. But now, with Running Late, new poems that are both personal and outward looking - calls from the Ontario back-country that everyone should hear.

Rolf Harvey worked as an Art Director and Production Designer for film and television for over twenty-five years, working on such acclaimed projects as David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) and received a Directors Guild of Canada Award in 2002.