On Edge


Poetry - General
50 Pages
Reviewed on 05/13/2013
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Author Biography

Bob MacKenzie’s poetry has appeared in hundreds of publications across North America and as far away as Australia , including The Dalhousie Review, University of Windsor Review, Ball State University Forum and many more.

Bob has published fourteen books of poetry and prose-fiction and his work has been featured in numerous anthologies. His poems have been reproduced by visual artists and sculptors and a public art gallery has devoted an entire visual arts exhibition to his poetry. He is possibly the only poet to have versions of his poetry owned by the Canada Council's National Art Bank.

Bob has received a number of awards for his writing, including “On Edge” winner of the poetry category in the international Sharp Writ Book Awards for 2012, novels “Ghost Shadow: Unfinished Sins” and “Another Eternity” winners in their respective categories of bronze medals in the 2012 international Readers Favorite Book Awards and an Ontario Arts Council grant for literature.

On his own throughout his career and for eighteen years with the performance ensemble Poem de Terre, Bob has performed his poetry live with original music and has released seven albums with Poem de Terre. Throughout his career, Bob has also presented performances by other artists, beginning in the summer of 1966 with two major readings at the Allied Arts Centre in Calgary featuring a young George Bowering, later to be Poet Laureate of Canada, and other Calgary poets, musicians, visual artists and sculptors.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Michelle Robertson for Readers' Favorite

"On Edge", written by Bob MacKenzie, is an intriguing book of emotions, thoughts, and circumstances in a poetic form. MacKenzie reveals topics within his poetry that are often hard to speak of in a natural everyday conversation. Within the 16 poems laid out in his book, MacKenzie reveals raw emotion that will make you gasp, cry, feel mad, sad, and broken inside, but at the same time let the reader know there is light through the horrible darkness of pain and suffering, but not often reached easily.

Reading Bob MacKenzie's incredible book of very raw, real poetry brought all emotions out in me. I recognize how difficult a few of the poems' subject matter must have been to write about, though essential. That fact alone makes reading this work of written art worthwhile. Readers of this book are going to most often relate to the dark demeanor of MacKenzie's words within this book. Horrible circumstances are often the most remembered; it is human nature. MacKenzie portrays this over and over. Bob MacKenzie reminds his readers that in dark times, light can appear through the smallest of cracks. The road to this light is most often a hard one but it is a road at the very least. Bob MacKenzie's "On Edge" will move many people in many different ways, as poetry can be interpreted variously. The poetry within this book is so very long because it draws your thoughts away from the actual poem and to a related situation, happenstance, or circumstance that a person has experienced, heard of, or fears.