The Sutler by Michael Kenyon

Michael Kenyon’s The Sutler charts a falling and a rising, taking the reader through the grief of a failing relationship to the emergence of new possibility. Each poem is a gentleness deeply felt; each embued with a compassion, an honesty both stark and unflinching. Kenyon’s prose has shown him to be a consummate craftsman, and these poems are proof that he is a remarkable poet.

Praise for The Sutler:

“It is a delight to find a poet emerge full-grown from the head of a prose writer. In the two long poems, especially – ‘Death of a Samurai’ and ‘The Sutler’-the voice is original as well as mature. Let us rejoice!” — P.K. Page

“The Sutler is a book that aches with the glory of a trapped heart breaking free. The poems move through a cycle of transformation from the pain of separation to the renewal of self-discovery. The long poem from which the book draws its title is what Cormac McCarthy would write if he were a poet, and the poem sequence “Death of a Samurai” is an equally stunning lyrical meditation on a lost gesture from a remembered film… The Sutler … announces a fully formed and significant voice in Canadian poetry.” — Jay Ruzesky