This is How We See the World includes eighteen previously published chapbook written over the course of thirty years by multi-award winning poet John B. Lee.
This is How We See the World beginning with work written by John B. Lee when he was a nineteen-year-old undergraduate at University of Western Ontario being championed by Canadian literary luminaries Margaret Avison, Stan Dragland and Don McKay. This noteworthy series of eighteen chapbooks published between the covers of a single volume culminates in recent award-winning work that confirms those early supporters’ faith in Lee’s promise as a writer to be reckoned with. For his part, poet George Whipple calls Lee the greatest living poet in English. James Deahl refers to Lee as the premier People’s Poet of his generation, and Marty Gervais sites Lee as the best poet in Canada. Little wonder then that Nelson Mandela, Alberto Manguel, Desmond Tutu, Australian poet Les Murray, have all seen fit to praise Lee’s work. Appointed Poet Laureate of both the city of Brantford and Norfolk County he writes what he sees in a voice for the ages.
This is How We See the World takes us shank’s mare across the Arctic Circle, on safari in South Africa, under the city into the catacombs of Lima, Peru, climbing along the walls of Machu Picchu, trekking onto the Great Wall of China, wading into the warm waters of the Indian Ocean off Thailand, and the aquamarine Caribbean seas on the coast of Cuba. Lee writes of home with the fresh eyes of a stranger and of far off places with the profound familiarity of home.
And what comes between this opening salvo and these closing lines is work that has such range of interest and depth of field to please any lover of great poetry. Lee’s poems on South Africa inspired Nobel Laureate, Nelson Mandela, to send Lee a letter of praise. A recipient of the Rubicon Chapbook Award, Leaf Press chapbook Award, the Golden Grassroots Chapbook Award, a three-time nominee for the b.p. Nichol Chapbook Award, with Honourable Mentions from several publishers it is little wonder that more than one reader has seen fit to call John B. Lee Canada’s premier poet. For his part George Whipple calls Lee the greatest living poet in English. Little wonder then that both the city of Brantford and Norfolk County have seen fit to appoint John B. Lee Poet Laureate. Lee continues to garner awards for his work. In 2016 he won the thousand dollar inaugural Hourglass Poetry Award naming him Hourglass Laureate publishing his work in Bosnia Herzegovina.
In the words of Lee’s first published poem written when he was sixteen: I will leave you now … with nothing to do
but to begin
at the end.
