Calgary 2 A.M.
In spite of the fact that it's twenty belowand winter has gone on for five long months,
in spite of being starved, starved almost to death
for greenness and warmth, flowers and birds,
in spite of the deadness of endless classrooms,
shopping centres, television shows,
 in spite of the pains in the gut, the migraines,
the wakings, the palpitations,
 in spite of a guilty knowledge of laziness,
of failure to meet some obligations,
in spite of all these things, and more,
I have to report that the moon tonight
is filling the house with a wild blueness,
my children grow, excel, are healthy,
my wife is gentle, there are friends,
and once in a while a poem will come.
 
In spite of the fact that it's twenty below,
tonight I smile. Summer bursts inside me.
 
~ Christopher Wiseman ~
 (In John Updike's Room)
 
As well as having his poems published in over 80 literary journals and many anthologies in Canada, Britain and the U.S., Christopher Wiseman has published 8 collections of poetry, an academic study of the Orkney poet Edwin Muir, and many literary articles and reviews. He has twice won the Government of Alberta Poetry Prize, as well as the Writers' Guild of Alberta poetry Prize, and been given an Alberta Achievement Award for services to the literary arts. He was Founding Vice-President, and later President of the Writers' Guild of Alberta, and has done much jury work in Alberta and for the Canada Council. He has taught in many Creative Writing courses in Canada and England, and given several hundred readings from Victoria to St. John's in Canada and in many universities, colleges and schools in Britain. He was poetry editor of ARIEL (A Review of International English Literature) for more than 20 years, and has worked in other editorial capacities. In 1993 he was a Hawthornden Fellow. His papers are lodged in Special Collections in the University of Calgary Library.