Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems

By Randall Maggs

Winner of the 2008 Winterset Award
and the 2009 E.J. Pratt Poetry Prize

Winner of the Kobzar Literary Award 2010

A hockey saga, wrapping the game’s story in the “intense, moody, contradictory” character of Terry Sawchuk, one of its greatest goalies.

In compact, conversational poems that build into a narrative long poem, Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems follows the tragic trajectory of the life and work of Terry Sawchuk, dark driven genius of a goalie who survived twenty tough seasons in an era of inadequate upper-body equipment and no player representation. But no summary touches the searching intensity of Maggs’s poems. They range from meditations on ancient/modern heroism to dramatic capsules of actual games, in which the mystery of character meets the mystery of transcendent physical performance. Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems is illustrated with photographs mirroring the text, depicting key moments in the career of Terry Sawchuk, his exploits and his agony.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Sep 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9781894078924

Randall Maggs

Randall Maggs is the author of Timely Departures (poetry, 1994), and co-editor of two anthologies pairing Newfoundland and Canadian poems with those of Ireland. He is one of the organizers and former artistic director of Newfoundland’s March Hare, the largest literary festival in Atlantic Canada. He is a former professor of literature at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems is his second poetry collection (Brick Books, 2008).

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