Because You Loved Being a Stranger: 55 Poets Celebrate Patrick Lane

by Susan Musgrave (Editor)

Why have so many writers chosen to dedicate poems to Patrick Lane over the years? This phenomenon fascinated Susan Musgrave long before she got the idea of collecting the best of the poems in a single anthology, which happily came together in conjunction with Lane's 55th birthday.

The contributors are some of Canada's best writers, among them Margaret Atwood, bill bissett, George Bowering, Lorna Crozier, David McFadden, P.K. Page and Al Purdy. Their poems for Lane are set in BC's Okanagan Valley, rural Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, and Toronto; in the Bessborough Hotel lounge, under the stars, at the snooker table, in the garden. There are poems lyrical, unsettling, funny, erotic; storytelling poems and sensual memories and invitations to dinner. In each poem a friend or fellow writer remembers a moment or a decade or a lifetime with Lane, or presents a poem inspired by Lane's own work.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Susan Musgrave is a Canadian poet and children's writer. She was born in Santa Cruz, California to Canadian parents, and currently lives in British Columbia, dividing her time between Sidney and Haida Gwaii.

Musgrave was married to Stephen Reid, a writer, convicted bank robber and former member of the infamous band of thieves known as the Stopwatch Gang. Their relationship was chronicled in 1999 in the CBC series Life and Times.

She currently teaches creative writing in the University of British Columbia's Optional Residency Master of Fine Arts Program.

Recognizing a life in writing, the Writers' Trust presented Susan Musgrave with the 2014 Matt Cohen Award for her lifetime of work.