White⋅out: n. a surface condition … in which no object casts a shadow, the horizon cannot be seen, and only dark objects are discernible …
Whiteout: when the heavy weather of daily life establishes the measure of the measureless; when the predatory nature of the accidental conjures cowboys and the comatose; when the sickly sweet pop of life underfoot contrasts the televised image, shrinking to a pinprick.
Whiteout: calques and towers, twin polar storms, falling, burning.
Whiteout: “a book of white nothing.”
George Murray’s sixth collection has been a decade in the making. At once taut, tender and terrifying, haunted and haunting, Whiteout shatters convention in the collision of order and rage, formlessness and hard-won serenity.
Published: April 2012
ISBN: 9781770410879
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 in.
Pages: 64
“There’s something unique about [Murray's] poems, and more importantly, something powerful that stirs readers, poem after poem after poem." —Salty Ink
“Work offers alternative visions of whiteout conditions, in which it is impossible to see what lies ahead." —The Georgia Straight
"Murray's celebrated lyric virtuosity is tempered, or rather, deepened, by the kind of knowing humility that makes for great drinking songs. Whiteout speaks in the wry, stunned voice of a man answering time's wake-up call." — The Globe and Mail
"I think this is Murray’s best book. It’s short, lean and long-gestating, and the poems sport a lightly worn formality that feels organic, never decorative." —National Post