The poet Matt Rader discusses his recent collection Ghosthawk (Nightwood Editions, 2021), with Joseph Planta.

Ghosthawk by Matt Rader (Nightwood Editions, 2021). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Ghosthawk

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

We continue talking to poets and their poetry this National Poetry Month as Matt Rader joins me again. The celebrated poet recently published a new collection, Ghosthawk. The notices for it have been really terrific, lauding Matt’s poetry for its beauty, its humility, and intense vision. The writer Jan Zwicky describes Mr. Rader a seer. This collection is described as a guidebook of imagination from grasslands to star fields to the weather of the poet’s body. It describes so evocatively the outdoors around his home in the Okanagan Valley, and how it affects not just his life but ours for the better. I’ll ask Matt to reflect on love and loss, as well as how he is. Asking somebody how they are is such a throw-away, we do it on impulse often not listening to the answer that question elicits. So, I thought Matt might have some thoughts on that itself, as I began our conversation that we taped nearly fourteen days ago. Matt Rader is an award-winning author of four volumes of poetry and a collection of stories, What I Want to Tell Goes Like This, which was published by Nightwood Editions, who publish Ghosthawk now. He was first on the program back in 2019 for his collection Visual Inspection. He is a core member of the Department of Creative Studies at UBC Okanagan where he lectures in creative writing. He joined me from Vernon, BC. Please welcome back to the Planta: On the Line program, Matt Rader; Mr. Rader, good morning.

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