Going the Distance

Raymond Souster (1921-2012) was a Canadian poet and lifelong resident of Toronto, which also served as one of the primary sources of inspiration for his free-verse poetry. Having served with the RCAF in the Second World War, the rest of his life was spent working at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, while simultaneously producing an impressive body of over one thousand poems and around fifty collections of poetry. He was associated with John Sutherland and the First Statement Group in Montreal, and would go on to provide support to up-and-coming Canadian poets through the establishment of Contact Press and Contact magazine with two other Canadian poets, Louis Dudeck and Irving Layton in the 1950s. His poems were particularly concerned with Toronto, and frequently he wrote about the contrast between nature and the city as well as some of the less discussed aspects of life in a big city.

Going the Distance was the first collection of poems that he published after he won the Toronto Book Award in 1979 with Hanging In. It is described as presenting a different aspect of his work, with longer, narrative poems that cover more diverse subject matter with more forceful verse and a more sardonic tone. This signed edition of the text is in Near Fine condition, as is its dust jacket, and is a fascinating piece of Canadian literary history.