In The Hundred Lives Russell Thornton illuminates the intricate imaginative orders of love at work within an individual life. From poems set in the eastern Mediterranean, with its abiding reverberations of the ancient Greek world, to a series of sonnet responses to the Gospel story of Lazarus, a lyric-narrative engagement with the mythic-erotic drama of the Biblical Song of Songs, to intensely personal poems that explore love and loss, this collection highlights the mystery of the interplay between inner and outer energies at the core of human experience.
Russell Thornton has published five previous books of poetry, with House Built of Rain being shortlisted for the BC Book Prize and the ReLit Poetry Award and Birds, Metals, Stones & Rain shortlisted for the 2013 Governor General’s Award. Thornton won the League of Canadian Poets National Contest in 2000 and The Fiddlehead magazine’s Ralph Gustafson Prize in 2009. He lives in North Vancouver.