Bellowing in the Common

Bellowing in the Common is Karl Petersen's first book. This collection "bellows" on behalf of the unheard things and people. Unheard and unseen, because they are too ordinary and common for human perception. His poetry shows how the mundane -- whether it be a boat rocking at the dock or a garden squash -- often rings with a voice louder and more startling than the extraordinary, if only we have ears to hear. Karl Petersen hears a bellowing in the common and, with a true poet's vocation, awakens us with new ears to the same old tunes.

Petersen was born in South Dakota and moved to Canada in 1982 to do a master's degree in theological studies at Regent College in Vancouver. He now teaches English as a second language in addition to writing.

George McWhirter is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of over a dozen books of poetry and fiction. His translation of selected poems by Jose Emilio Pacheco won him the F.R. Scott Prize for translation. Mr. McWhirter's collection, "Catalan Poems", shared the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and his novel, "Cage", won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 1987.