The War Poems: Screaming at Heaven

Albert Camus believed people relied on reason to form and inform their lives. But what happens when time and circumstance get in the way?

In his collection War Poems, Inman masterfully uses poetry to weave stories of lost or gained innocence, death, joy, hard work, and humour — and characterizes them to show that they are the traits that built Canada. Inman shows that we did not become a country via some specific battle or war - war being a set of circumstance gone wrong. Canada is much more than that. We are people who continually reason through change.

War Poems does not describe a traditional ’war front’ save in a poem or two, rather, it inverts the ’war front’ to the everyday, to circumstance that affects character, to the province of our consciousness. Whether it’s through technological advances, information or consumerism, this constant reasoning is what is at the core of who we are as Canadians. Inman’s poetry reaches into the heart of stories and the people who belong to them in a poetic journey that moves through time and its many wars — on the battlefield and off.