| Ploughing is no longer an appropriate pursuit for farmers, yet Charles
still furrows—not through the soil, but through the documents of enduring
writers. He follows an unyielding reading schedule that
cultivates strikingly novel expressions teeming with unrepressed thoughts. Charles says his work “refuses, with misgivings, certain conventions, including the inevitable mannerist fate of a straightforward avant-garde! It ends up in an excluded middle probing for an edge in an impossible age – especially given no Minerva, no owl, and no “set” time.” Charles always challenges and extends thought. He reawakens convention with unconventional, innovative writing that makes for an infinitely rewarding read. His work burps a language laced with evocative humour. He winds phrases over and over, rolling and softening time, oftentimes erasing it. He sometimes thinks his best two lines (from Let’s Hear It For Them) are “I wish I had more learning/ so I could wear it lightly”. |
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"The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, preface to Philosophy of Right, 1952 Oxford University Press. |
| Charles authors several books which show his mastery of the long poem. With his seventh poetry book, Wormwood Vermouth, Warphistory (Saskatoon, SK Thistledown Press, © 1995), he won the 1996 Writers Guild of Alberta (WGA) poetry award. |
