Night Skating

Don Gutteridge's collections of poetry celebrate the poet's childhood in Point Edward, the small town nestled under that yawning bridge teeming with cars dashing to places only dreamed about by those young villagers. One gets to know the wiles of the local fish and the best fishing places, and then sits and wonders at the woodworking skills of the poet's grandfather or the eerily brilliant skating of his father. As I've read his collections, I've come to view the sands of Canatara as my own playground, seeing those ancient sand drifts quite clearly and shivering at the shock of the cold, blue water.
Night Skating is especially moving as it freezes a pivotal stage of life and reveals it in all its wonder, complexity and magic. We witness Mrs. Bray and Gran and the architectural beauty of each house in Point Edward as anchors to that greater image of endless starry skies, arctic chills, which only enhance the fever-bright excitement, and those brilliant and colorful skaters who move ever faster as they approach their future. There's magic happening on every page of this lovely collection: a feast of sound, sense, motion and yearning, all dressed in scintillating, fleeting perfection.
- Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite