"Skaldance is faultless. I like the narrative strategies, I marvel at them. And the way Geddes moves inside varieties of language, from the colloquial to quotation. And the novel's worth of characters." - Robert Kroetsch
Skaldance weaves in and out of Orkney history the way wind, ocean, and invaders have shaped that unique Norse-Scottish landscape and culture. With wry, quiet humour or bold drama, Gary Geddes establishes connections with a people and a land where his forebears fished long ago.
An outsider with a stake in these remote northern islands, Geddes takes on the role of skald, the poet of Old Norse tradition, who reports on love, politics, and the past. He creates a polyphony of voices, some ironically detached, others passionately engaged. They tell of hardship and desire in comic vignettes, heartbreaking lyrics, or sagas of survival. Whether lighthearted or tragic, the poems in Skaldance are intelligent, witty, exquisitely crafted, and supple in their expression.
One of Canada's most respected men of letters, Gary Geddes has won the Gabriela Mistral Prize, the Archibald Lampman Prize, the National Magazine Gold Award, and the Americas Best Book Award in the Commonwealth Poetry Competition. Active Trading: Selected Poems 1970-1995 (Peterloo Poets, 1996) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
"Gary Geddes in undoubtedly the best of the contemporary Canadian poets I've read. Flying Blind is one of the best collections of poems published in English in recent years - not just Canada, but anywhere. His work is achieved technically; it is moving and, above all, it is interesting and accessible." - Douglas Dunn