The Lover's Progress

'David Solway opts for a bawdier approach to the lyric in The Lover's Progress. He models his lyric sequence on William Hogarth's famous series of paintings, The Rake's Progress (1733-35), and transports the rakish protagonist at the centre of Hogarth's narrative into the twenty-first century. Solway makes the rake a &'grave;cruiser'' of bars, women, and philosophies, as well as a dabbler in poetry. Perpetually in motion, the lover travels from Canada to Greece and revisits many of Solway's favourite haunts.'

David Solway is the author of many books of poetry including the award-winning Modern Marriage, Bedrock, Chess Pieces, Saracen Island: The Poetry of Andreas Karavis and The Lover's Progress: Poems after William Hogarth, the latter illustrated by Marion Wagschal and adapted for the stage by Curtain Razors. His work has been anthologized in The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, McClelland and Stewart's New Canadian Poetry, Border Lines: Contemporary Poetry in English from Copp Clark, and The Bedford Introduction to Literature from St. Martin's Press. Among his prose publications, Education Lost won the QSPELL Prize for Nonfiction and Random Walks was a finalist for Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. His most recent prose work, The Turtle Hypodermic of Sickenpods, was released by McGill-Queen's in 2001. Solway publishes regularly in such journals as The Atlantic Monthly, The Sewanee Review, Books in Canada and Canadian Notes & Queries, and is an occasional contributor to the book pages of the National Post. His more specialized writings have appeared in the International Journal of Applied Semiotics, Policy Options: Institute on Research in Public Policy, and the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. Solway has recently completed a new collection of poems entitled Franklin's Passage, forthcoming with McGill-Queen's University Press in fall, 2003, and is now working on his fourth book in education and culture, entitled Reading, Riting and Rhythmitic. He was appointed writer-in-residence at Concordia University for 1999-2000 and is currently a contributing editor with Canadian Notes & Queries and an associate editor with Books in Canada.