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The Relativity of Journeys

by Stanley Lowther

86 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0498; ISBN 1-55369-096-6; US$13.50, C$15.33, EUR11.00, £8.00

The Relativity of Journeys is Stanley Lowther's impressions of his life's journeys. His childhood in England, emigration to the Maritimes, and later, Watergate's Washington, Khomeini's Iran, Franco's Madrid, and many other voyages in North Africa...


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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book

The thesis of The Relativity of Journeys is that travel is always relative to the starting point, 'home', and our impressions of places are coloured by this 'psychic relativity'. In the form of condensed anecdotes from childhood in England, then through immigration to the Maritimes, we follow the author on his trips to Watergate's Washington and Khomeini's Iran, Madrid at the time of Franco's death, as well as on journeys in North Africa, the Middle East, South America, Europe and the Caribbean. Short vignettes in free verse with accompanying photographs, give us an intimate glimpse of personal reactions to places and events through those incidents, often humorous, sometimes raunchy, which remain in one's mind long after a journey is over. The book looks back in nostalgia to the 1970s and 1980s, when such carefree travels seemed to bring us closer the brotherhood of man, unaffected by the tragic events of September 2001 and their likely long-term consequences.


About the Author

Stanley Lowther (a pseudonym), believes the reader can learn much about him from his poems, as they are sure to present an accurate self-portrait, starting from childhood to the present. Prosaically, it emerges that the author is a marine biologist, interested in fisheries, was an immigrant from the UK to Canada, has worked as an advisor in national and international negotiations on maritime affairs, and since then has travelled substantially in various parts of the world. Through careful reading however, many other deductions can be made about his character and interests, since this is in one sense a brief story of his life, and needs no further description.


Sample Excerpts

SIRTE TO TRIPOLI

The dust storm
that last night sifted in around the windows
and doors of the guest hut
still raged at dawn
as we left in the land rover
following in convoy, trucks
laden with sheep

Sand snakes slither in the brume
across the road just clear of the tarmac,
air stifles metallic and gritty in the cab.

Through lacunae in the storm
salt pans glisten in the haze:
dead camels, tire-coloured,
strew the verge

An occasional pack of wild dogs,
black, white, brindled
not quite yet dingoes, amiably shares
a long-dead sheep
under a solitary eucalyptus

Unwitting sculptures, concrete
masses strung with tangled iron
along the road,
commemorate colonial pasts
and not-far-distant wars; complemented by
dead cars, whose fenders
writhe upwards from the sage brushes

Metallic faeces of oil cans
litter the pocked ground
in browning drifts
by the national filling station;
plastic bags
gesture pathetically from broken
thorn bushes in the wind

Given time,
the eye could come to love
all this: its sordid, angular purity
of understatement: free from the boring
symmetry of growing things.

WATERGATE'S WASHINGTON. OCTOBER 1974

The first meeting was earlier that year
in a hotel opposite the Watergate Hotel
where we bribed the doorman
for ashtrays to commemorate
the recent scandal

The next, called hastily,
saw us Maritimers back again
in the Elephant's lair,
headquarters of the CIA's
deals and intrigue:
A motley bunch of scientists and fishermen
from the little big northern neighbour:
up to discuss those mythical boundaries
in the eastern sea

We meet this time
Straight from the airport
at a small restaurant
which covers as a mid-day
strip club: sandwiches on maps
with swinging melons and beer,
hot discussions on national interests
took place on enemy territory; high heels
straddling the zone of contention

Wayne had problems that night
of a more personal kind:
"She put her hand in me pocket
ter feel me nuts: did she ever gasp!
only later I was lookin' fer me wallet...

At breakfast the black man
pretending to be a waiter
poured coffee
while looking me in the eye
till it slopped over into the saucer.


Catalogue Information




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