One Heart, One Way The Life of Alden Nowlan

Born near Windsor, Nova Scotia, poet, journalist and novelist Alden Nowlan challenged the apparent disadvantages of poverty, and a mere four grades of formal education, to publish 25 books, including three plays. Haunted by ghosts of his early life, Nowlan nevertheless discovered the ultimate "exchange of gifts" in the love of his wife and son. They fueled his bravery in plumbing the depths of human loneliness and confessing love's most tender expressions. Nowlan's empathy with society's poor, as well as the earth beneath his feet, finds him cited as often in medical school, pulpit, or military mess, as in the work of the poets he inspired. He lived long enough in his 50 years to appreciate the sternest discipline: "The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise." His writing earned him two honorary degrees and numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the 1968 Governor General's Award For Poetry. That same year he became writer in residence at The University of New Brunswick, a position he filled until his death in 1983. Gregory M. Cook, the author of five books of poetry, became a close friend of Alden Nowlan during the last 20 years of his extraordinary life. The day they met for the senior poet's first published interview, Cook records magic moments of Nowlan's paternal and romantic love, his phenomenal compassion for the less fortunate other, and his intrinsic intelligence that was exhibited in his life and his works. Born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Gregory Cook graduated from Acadia University. He has worked as a preacher, newspaper reporter,dramatist, freelance journalist, and Executive Director of the Writers' Federation ofCook, Greg is the author of 'One Heart, One Way The Life of Alden Nowlan' with ISBN 9781895900590 and ISBN 189590059X.