Walking Upstream

By (author): Lloyd Ratzlaff

A debut poetry collection, both lyrical and surprisingly playful, about overcoming a harsh evangelical upbringing and seeking consolation from the beauty of the natural world.

This collection by the author of three books of nonfiction takes readers into one man’s struggle to escape the corrosive effects of a punishing religion. We meet the small, frightened boy afraid of hell-fire and eternal guilt, and decades later, the man kicking free of the habit of self-excoriation.

There is humour in the observation of the antics of birds, especially magpies and other corvids, and profound humility in the struggle to resist a confining culture.


Magpie, I love you more

for your flight and strut

than for your

squawk,

but can’t vilify a creature

ten times tougher than I am

and a hell of a lot more handsome.

We walk with the poet-as-flaneur through neighbourhoods and along the river in a small prairie city, observing the incongruities, absurdities, and startling images and sounds of city life. And as the mystic who believes in something far beyond himself, so the beetle he sees on a path is “a little Buddha,” and the wind and the flowing river are “irresistible forces,” while a pine teaches him “how you move / without going / anywhere.”

AUTHOR

Lloyd Ratzlaff

LLOYD RATZLAFF is the author of the literary nonfiction titles The Crow Who Tampered With Time, Backwater Mystic Blues, and Bindy’s Moon. His essays are also featured in several anthologies, including Sons and Mothers: Stories From Mennonite Men; Reading the River: A Traveller’s Companion to the North Saskatchewan River; and apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose. A former minister, counsellor, and lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan, he has taught writing classes for READ Saskatoon, the Western Development Museum, and the University of Saskatchewan Certificate of Art and Design. He was a columnist for Prairie Messenger Catholic Journal through its last nineteen years of publication. He lives in Saskatoon.


Reviews

Past Praise the mundane made keenly relevant and the divine fully believable and grounded Consider it narrative poetry a collection of reflections a series of intimate snapshots and find the soul of a poet and a friend within its pages Pacific Rim Review of Books on Backwater Mystic Blues

Past Praise A keenly detailed often lyrical exploration of love loss and courage Saskatchewan Writers Guild John V Hicks Long Manuscript Awards on Bindys Moon

Past Praise Bindys Moon is exquisitely rendered Ratzlaffs personal reflections deploy the delicate tuning of an inquisitive mind the sober bell of experience and the deft use of language to grapple with lifes complexities and transcendent potentials Saskatchewan Book Awards

Awards

There are no awards found for this book.
Excerpts & Samples ×
There are no other resources for this book.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

78 Pages
8.00in * 6.00in *
200.00gr

Published:

April 08, 2025

Publisher:

Thistledown Press

ISBN:

9781771872706

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Religious

Language:

eng

No author posts found.

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.

Other books by Lloyd Ratzlaff