In this masterful work by award-winning poet David Zieroth, a man opens his apartment door to find a younger version of himself. The boy becomes his guide on a profound journey from 21st-century urban Vancouver to the 1950s Canadian prairies and back again. Along the way, time slides magically back and forth between the speaker's contemporary existence and his rural childhood life.
Zieroth's language resonates with a strong cadence and rhythm, becoming almost hypnotic as it weaves back and forth through time and around subjects as diverse as the endless dark of the snow and the inexplicable way we learn from the children we once were and the adults we are becoming.
The Village of Sliding Time, a marvellously achieved addition to Zieroth's work, is a major contribution to the long poem in Canada.
A book-length poem blending the time of the narrator's childhood with his modern life
"David Zieroth begins this account with the night of his own conception, continues through early childhood to schooldays and ends with his family's move to BC... [He] skillfully avoids cynicism and nostalgia, engrossing the reader in a memory album that is not narrative, although narratives are implied... Loneliness, family ties, farmyard slaughter and schoolboy pranks; this is a loving but not mawkish reminiscence. The undertone is an awareness of death that insures against the sentimental... It amounts to an engaging and highly readable memoir."
- Hannah Main-van der Kamp, BC Bookworld
