When You're Down On Your Knees in a Field Called Forever

Poems of devotion and shared experience in an age of loneliness

“The finest of our poets. Truly.”

—Marty Gervais, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Windsor

In When You’re Down on Your Knees in a Field Called Forever, John B. Lee offers a luminous new collection of poems shaped by devotion, memory, and a deep concern for the erosion of communal life. 

Mosaic Press published John B. Lee's 2019 book Into a Land of Strangers: Documentary Poems in which he explores his own ancestry involving the tumultuous decades of China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 2023, Mosaic Press published A School Called Normal, a collection of autobiographical poems and stories about growing up in rural Ontario.

When You’re Down on Your Knees in a Field Called Forever extends Lee’s autobiographical journey offering his most accomplished poetry yet. We find reasons to not only celebrate the presence of communal experiences but to lament their passing. Lee asserts that when people gather together and begin to sing, our hearts take up a powerful common rhythm.

"John B. Lee sows everyday experiences with timeless gravity and awe."

— George Whipple, poet & critic

"John B. Lee's lines flow smoothly from one fresh new metaphor to the next.”

— Bernice Lever, poet

“He is the premier poet of his generation."

—Don Gutteridge, poet & novelist

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN B. LEE is widely acknowledged as one of Canada’s most prolific and accomplished literary figures. He is the author or editor of more than seventy books, including the bestsellers That Sign of Perfection: Poems and Stories on the Game of Hockey, and Smaller Than God, words of spiritual longing. His work has been published internationally and translated into French, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. Lee has received numerous honours, including the $10,000 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, the People’s Poetry Award, and lifetime appointments as Poet Laureate of Brantford and Honorary Poet Laureate of Norfolk County.

ISBN   9781771619042

Softcover

144 pages