Cantos from a Small Room
Robert Hilles
January 1993
88 pages | ISBN 978-0-919897-37-3
**Winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry**
In his seventh book of poetry, Hillies describes his feelings of affection and admiration for his mother-in-law, and the sense of loss the family experienced upon her death of cancer in her middle years. An astounding collection of poems, Cantos from a Small Room won the Governor General's Award for poetry.
About Nothing Vanishes:
"The voice seldom strives for the distant simile or the arresting metaphor, instead it adds detail to detail with an attentiveness which very obviously cares more for accuracy than effect, and which makes it the more remarkable that long before the last time here you know you are trusting these pages (pages about a lost mother, a fading father, cherished children) as, these days, you rarely trust any page at all. And one more thing - there are love poems here which make most other poems in the category look like cliches: 'I take your hand/ let it shape my words for me,/ your tongue pushing back/ the darkness in my mouth.'" – Don Coles
About the Author
Robert Hillies was born and raised in Kenora, Ontario, and now lives in Calgary, Alberta, with his wife Rebecca and their two children Breanne and Austin. He teaches computer programming at the DeVry Institute of Technology. His first novel, Raising of Voices, won the Writers' Guild of Alberta Georges Bugnet Award for best novel. He also won the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1994 for his book Cantos from a Small Room.
