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Sid Marty will be featuring his new book Oldman’s River, New and Collected Poems in a combined spoken word and music performance at the Alpine Club on Wednesday, May 17. The author of Men for the Mountains and The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek, began his literary career as a poet, and this year marks the 50th Anniversay of his first book, Headwaters (poems) which was published to national acclaim in 1973 by Canada’s most distinguished literary publisher, McClelland and Stewart. Sid will also present a tale or two from his prose books in an evening he describes as “Leaning on the Wind and Falling off the Mountain.” Humour is an important element in his work, whether writing tongue in cheek columns in praise of ATVs, or describing how he began his Parks Canada training in helicopter sling-rescue operations by being dragged down the Banff airstrip on the seat of his lederhosen. Sid Marty is also a long-time musician and singer/songwriter and will punctuate the yarns and poems with some original songs played on guitar or mandolin.
The Critics Speak
On Headwaters, (poems): “Sharp and clean as a glacier ridge.” William French, Globe and Mail
On Nobody Danced With Miss Rodeo, (poems): “Marty’s images are plain as the worn haft of a favorite knife but they are attached to a glittering metaphysical blade.” Stephen Hume, Edmonton Journal.
On Men for the Mountains: Not since Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire has a writer produced a book of his experiences as a national park ranger that is not only very well written, but eloquently so.” The Bulletin, Bend, Oregon.
“Marty’s latest, The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek, is a work of poetic genius”. Terry Glavin, Canadian Geographic.
(Black Grizzly won the grand prize at the Banff Festival of Mountain Books in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award in Nonfiction)
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