The Canadian poet and publisher Glen Sorestad (b. 1937) has written eleven collections of poems and edited a number of anthologies of poems and short stories. He has lived most of his life in Saskatchewan, where he is currently Poet Laureate. Sorestad taught at schools for over twenty years until 1981 when he devoted himself to writing and to the Thistledown Press, which he set up and which focuses on publishing books of poetry and juvenile books. His poems have appeared in more than thirty anthologies and numerous journals across Canada, the USA, Australia and Europe. Sorestad has also played an active part in the Writers Union of Canada and he has been honoured with a life membership in the League of Canadian Poets. Sorestad's two latest collections of poems Icons of Flesh (1998) and Today I Belong to Agnes (2000) are touching accounts of the gradually increasing frailty of his own parents. As they slither towards death, the adult child becomes himself their caregiver. Sorestad's poetic expression is fine-tuned and sparse; his poems offer glimpses of everyday joys and revel in the quiet moments of life. They also deal with human memory, which, as death approaches, grows thinner with regard to the present but stronger with regard to the very earliest experiences.
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