• Title: Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems
• Author: Randall Maggs
• ISBN: 1-894078-62-4
• ISBN-13: 978-1-894078-62-7
• Pages: 224
• Year: 2008
• Size: 6" × 8.75"
• Price: $20.00

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Listen to Poems from Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems

• Listen to individual poems on AudioBoo
• Listen to a grouping of poems on YouTube

Winner of the 2008 Winterset Award
and the 2009 E.J. Pratt Poetry Prize

Winner of the Kobzar Literary Award 2010

Shortlisted for the 2009 Heritage and History Book Award
[Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador]
and longlisted for the Relit Award

Globe 100 book in 2008

A hockey saga, wrapping the game's story in the "intense, moody, contradictory" character of Terry Sawchuk, one of its greatest goalies.

Denied the leap and dash up the ice,
what goalies know is side to side, an inwardness of monk
and cell. They scrape. They sweep. Their eyes are elsewhere
as they contemplate their narrow place. Like saints, they pray for nothing,
which brings grace. Off-days, what they want is space. They sit apart
in bars. They know the length of streets in twenty cities.
But it's their saving sense of irony that further
isolates them as it saves.

- from "One of You"

In compact, conversational poems that build into a narrative long poem, Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems follows the tragic trajectory of the life and work of Terry Sawchuk, dark driven genius of a goalie who survived twenty tough seasons in an era of inadequate upper-body equipment and no player representation. But no summary touches the searching intensity of Maggs's poems. They range from meditations on ancient/modern heroism to dramatic capsules of actual games, in which the mystery of character meets the mystery of transcendent physical performance. Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems is illustrated with photographs mirroring the text, depicting key moments in the career of Terry Sawchuk, his exploits and his agony.

"Through his marvelous, moving poetry, Randall Maggs gets closer than any biographer to the heart of the darkest, most troubled figure in the history of the national game. This may be the truest hockey book ever written. It reaches a level untouched by conventional sports literature... His Sawchuk is real." - Stephen Brunt, Globe and Mail columnist and Canada's premier sportswriter and commentator

Third printing

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BookShorts Film now available -- Night Work: A Sawchuk Poem - a dramatic short film based on the book Night Work: the Sawchuk Poems by Randall Maggs

"I was attracted to the work because it's rife with incredible powerful imagery right from the first page," states JUSTIN SIMMS, St. John's-based Director of NIGHT WORK: A SAWCHUK POEM by long-time Corner Brook resident and poet RANDALL MAGGS. "For ten years, Randy immersed himself in the cult and culture of hockey in the early days of the sport, before they wore much equipment, before a goalie wore a mask. What kind of man puts himself in the path of a rubber missile travelling straight to his head at the velocity of a Bobby Hull shot? That's what we explore in the film."

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And here's a short 8 minute film "Legends of Hockey Terry Sawchuk" 

Source: www.youtube.com - from the Biography Channel

This is the career of one of the greatest goaltenders of all time Terry Sawchuk. You will learn the tales of this goaltender from teammates and coaches.  Interviews with many of his fellow players - and lots of action shots.

Interview with Randall Maggs about Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems – by Dave O – Postcards from Gravelly Beach - Poetic Stories about Goalies – Postcard # 62 – Poet Randall Maggs discusses his book “Night Work” about the troubled soul of legendary hockey goalie Terry Sawchuk plus the nuances of story-telling, conversations with goaltenders, Sawchuk’s Ukrainian heritage and convergence of history and hockey with host Dave Thorvald Olson at the Robson Square covered outdoor rink in Vancouver following a poetry reading promoted by publisher Brick Books.

Full Podcast

Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems – Interview with Randall Maggs by Darryl Salach, The Toronto Quarterly, Issue 4, September 2010 

April 11-12, 2011 - Nolan Whyte writes at Frozen Sheet Hockey blog, “An Interview with Randall Maggs, author of NIGHT WORK; The Sawchuk Poems. 1 of 3" “As a hockey book, Night Work is unique. It combines aspects of biography and sports history, but it is, after all, a collection of poetry. The dichotomous nature of the project was what drew me in, and when I was finished it I understood that I had something to say about the game as well. It was this book of abstract thought that was the catalyst to my becoming a blogger.” More, 1 of 3

“An Interview with Randall Maggs, author of NIGHT WORK; The Sawchuk Poems. 2 of 3" 

“An Interview with Randall Maggs, author of NIGHT WORK; The Sawchuk Poems. 3 of 3"

In “Hockey needs a place in our literature” Paul Martin, who teaches a course called Hockey and Canadian Literature online for the University of Vermont, says that compared with these other sports, hockey, by its nature and with its high speed, may elude evocative narrative description.

Asked to name a personal favourite, Martin offers up Randall Maggs’s Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems.

"I frequently teach students who are initially resistant to reading poetry and wonder how poetry has anything to do with hockey," Martin says.
 
"Maggs’s portrait of perhaps the greatest and most enigmatic goaltender ever to play the game is one of the finest examples there is of hockey literature."