This House is Condemned
David Haskins
December 2013
176 pages | ISBN 978-1-894987-78-3
**Shortlisted for the Kerry Schooley Award – Hamilton Literary Awards**
**Shortlisted for the Hamilton Arts Council Literary Award for Non-fiction**
This House is Condemned is equal parts elegy, portraiture and exploration of a life lived at the edge of Lake Ontario. In prose both hard-hitting and heart-felt, David Haskins writes essays of immigrating to Canada and building his life as a teacher and writer. Currents of poetry run through the book, which is as touched with humour as it is with sadness. He writes of indestructible garden forks, rafts that bear him away unexpectedly and of the loves that ebb and flow throughout a life. This House is Condemned is a powerful collection that picks the reader up and places them beside the author, walking along the shores of the lake.
Articles
Where in Canada: Life lived at the edge of Lake Ontario (Literary Press Group of Canada, 17/01/2014)
“This House is Condemned is equal parts elegy, portraiture and exploration of a life lived at the edge of Lake Ontario. Described by author David Haskins as “a canvas for moving light,” Lake Ontario also becomes the blank page on which he writes pointedly and poignantly about everything from childhood Christmases to adult travels to the loss of his father and the eventual demolition of his family home.”
A Child's Christmas in Beamsville (David Haskins, Hamilton Spectator, 24/12/2013)
“Childhood memories drift together like wood smoke from neighbourhood chimneys, each fireplace a sun of its own galaxy of rosy-cheeked children and red-nosed uncles, fussing aunts and the faithful dog who settles far enough away from any commotion not to get stepped on but close enough to still bask in the warmth of the flames.”
Excerpts
Click here to see inside This House is Condemned.
"A Child's Christmas in Beamsville"
Video
David Haskins reads the beginning of "George and Gracie" from his new book, This House is Condemned, at Hamilton's Workers Arts & Heritage Centre.
About the Author
David Haskins is published in over thirty literary journals, anthologies, and books, and has collected his earlier poems in the book Reclamation. He has won first prizes from the CBC Literary Competition, the Canadian Authors Association, and the Ontario Poetry Society. He lives in Grimsby, Ontario.
