The Gift of Country Life

Memories of farming in the 1940s conjure up images of horse-drawn farm machinery, grain stooks in fields, hay meadows, free-range chickens and cords of wood strategically placed for fuelling the kitchen range -- all before farming became the highly technical, big-time operation it is now.

Author Victor Carl Friesen was born and raised on a quarter section farm in Saskatchewan and still owns the "home place." It is there he still goes to renew his inner being. His poems, grouped into seasonal activities or observations, celebrate the rural world. Written in traditional blank verse, his poetry includes activities of yesteryear, his personal connections to rural life and his reverence for nature. Nature, as Henry David Thoreau said, is "one and continuous."

Victor Carl Friesen lives and writes in Rosthern, Saskatchewan, but photographs nature anywhere. The first recipient of the Alberta Book Award, he is the author of five books including The Year Is a Circle.