Rowe recasts the small tragedies of his life in Gander as soaring for-the-ages tragedy in what amounts to a memorable debut.–Ariel Gordon, Winnipeg Free Press
Rowe’s poetry is able to capture the feelings and physical reactions one has to nature and sound. He is also quite skilled in realistically personifying nature as well as connecting the material sense of nature to our mental reality. Moreover, there is an overall sense that the author is connecting much of the fragility and evanescence of nature to the mortality of life. Themes of death and dealing with loss become even more prevalent towards the end of the book. The author also dips a bit into the supernatural and mythological with personal elegies and references. As well, Rowe subtly explores the relationship between father and son, ancestry, and how things change over time. –Jennifer Musgrave, The Argosy
These careful anthropomorphisms give flesh to the vague and difficult reality of how we relate to our geography – a relationship that is, as his poetry would suggest, at times as strange and real as that shared between one human and another, if only in observance … Never More There is landscape poetry, in a broad and almost spiritual sense of the word. Read it slowly and deliberately and keep an ear to the ground for things to come from Stephen Rowe.–Nick Shuurman, youngpoets.ca
The seven-poem sequence “Lords of Large Experience” is exceptionally moving, as are “The Wallet” (a superb sonnet with a surprising turn) and the anaphoric dirge “Aubade” … with this collection, Rowe announces himself as a poet to watch.–Zachariah Wells, Quill & Quire