VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 30, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- North: a direction; a suggestion that conjures images of hard, frozen landscapes and survival at its most primitive. It is a place where J. Michael Yates has toiled, and its influence has seeped into his pen to produce poems as vast and epic as ice fields, which he has collected in his new book, Hongyun: New and Collected Shorter Poems, 1955 - 2005 (now available through AuthorHouse).
"This book is the culmination of 50 years of high places and extreme polar latitudes in the service of chasing a metaphor called 'North,'" Yates says.
His tireless pursuit of this ultimate metaphor has taken him to the top of the world. He has scoured the terrains of Russia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Alaska as well as the high frozen land beyond the Arctic Ocean, the Northwest Territories of Canada and the mountain ranges of coastal British Columbia. During his travels, he has lived and worked closely with the Inuit and several other Indian nations. The result is a tome of poems radiating magic and beauty like the sun fracturing into colored spectrums across the frozen tundra.
Hongyun is a book about landscapes, both the physical high altitudes of the north and those of the mind, heart and soul, rendered into black and white by the pen and hand of a poet. Having never adhered to any "school of poetics," Yates is free to roam the world and capture all of its cold beauty and icy depths. "Insel: The Queen Charlotte Islands Mediations" offers a glimpse inside that world.
Again and again I go away from you and send back only words. Where I am is very cold and the ice figures I collect for you never, somehow, survive the transport. And so these small black tracks upon the page. Where you are is too warm for me. This message is a map which shows my exact coordinates at this moment. Follow it. Try to find me. I should like to be here when you arrive, but in this weather it is necessary to keep moving.
As treacherous and rewarding as a journey into the Arctic Circle, Hongyun explores the places many fear to tread and exhumes pieces of humanity long frozen in the ice.
Born in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, Yates earned graduate degrees at the Universities of Missouri and Michigan before exploring the arctic regions of the world. A widely published and awarded writer and poet who has received praise from notable writers such as Arthur Miller and Joyce Carol Oates, Yates held a number of positions, such as a logger, "a powder monkey" and a motorcycle racer. Now retired after 17 years as a maximum security prison guard and SWAT team member, he and his wife teach from their home in Vancouver.
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