POETRY
Ultramarine. 2023. Kentville, N.S.: Gaspereau Press. ” …essential reading for our times. Combining a naturalist’s gift for attention with a poet’s keen ear, this collection offers thoughtful, musical poems on childhood, family, and non-human animals. At the heart of this collection is an extended meditation on the workings of time, explored through poems spanning decades in the speaker’s life, as well as other pieces that gesture towards time’s unfathomable reaches. Varied in both form and tome, this is a probing book that pays fitting homage to the “little wonders” of our world.” Jury citation, J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry award, 2024
Icarus, Falling of Birds (A Poem by Harry Thurston, Photography by Thaddeus Holownia). 2022. Jolicure, NB: Anchorage Press. “Thurston and Holownia have taken an event terrible in its heedless destruction and turned it into a moving and beautiful meditation on the power of mindful ecology.” – Catherine Walker, The Miramichi Reader, https://miramichireader.ca/2022/10/icarus-falling-of-birds-a-poem-by-harry-thurston-2/
Broken Vessel, Thirty-five Days in the Desert. Kentville: Gaspereau Press. “A poet-naturalist in the Thoreauvian tradition, Thurston constantly reminds us of how important it is to be fully present in the midst of our own brief lives and to be sensitive to the more-than human world around us.” Leonor Maria Martinez Serrano, University of Cordoba, Spain. “The Multitudinous Sparseness of Space in Harry Thurston’s Broken Vessel.” Roczniki Humanistyczne. Vol 68 No 11 (2020) https://doi.org/10.18290/rh206811-10
Animals of My Own Kind: New and Selected Poems. 2009. Montreal: Vehicule Press, Signal Editions. “Thurston’s continuing engagement with the nature of language (and the language of nature) is one of the most compelling elements of his poetry.”–Susie DeCoste, The Goose, Issue 7, Spring 2010.
If Men Lived On Earth. 2000. Kentville: Gaspereau Press “The lines are clear, thought-through, elemental, irrefutable. They transform history, economics, and ecology into experienced truth…. Thurston is a marvelous poet; his third book is not only his best but also one of the best to be published in, well, 15 years–George Elliot Clarke, The Chronicle Herald, April 30, 2000. “I love Thurston’s drive to possess physical knowledge, and I love the corporeal grasp of his language (language that itself seems mined from the damp, coarse-grained weft of Maritime scrubland and seascape)…something is amiss when a poet as interesting as Thurston can missile across our literary scene for 15 years and not trigger any of the warning systems set up to alert us to incoming talent.”–Carmine Starnino, The Montreal Gazette.
Clouds Flying Before The Eye. 1985. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions. “The measure of this book’s success is that it is a book, not just a collection of poems, and something stronger, more enduring than what is conveyed by ‘success’ may be called for, for everywhere in it are poems, lines, coalescings of image, emotion and intelligence that are certain to achieve a permanent place in Canadian poetry.”–J.K. Snyder, Atlantic Provinces Book Review, Feb-Mar. 1986. “… an accomplished and honest poet whom one can trust with language and with his feelings… these are qualities we recognize together only in major talents.”–Christopher Levenson, Journal of Canadian Poetry,
Barefaced Stone. 1980. Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books. “What shines through all is keen delight both in his world and in his craft (I am reminded of John Thompson and his dark richness) What more can we ask of a poet than such finenesses…”–Robert Gibbs, The Fiddlehead. “Barefaced Stone testifies to a decisive breakthrough in Maritime poetry: the violence of nature, the pressure of history are sung within the context of a form which guarantees an ultimate harmony, and which preserves as it transcends.”–Liliane Welch, The Antigonish Review, 1981.
NON-FICTION
The Atlantic Coast, A Natural History. Greystone Books and David Suzuki Foundation. “Anyone who has ever browsed through a bookstore in a beach town knows we are not exactly short of guides to the natural history of the coast, particularly the Atlantic Coast of the United States. But this book is different… By ignoring political boundaries in favor of natural divisions, Mr. Thurston paints a clearer picture of the plants and animals of the region, the ecological niches they inhabit and the problems tormenting them.”—The New York Times, July 9, 2012.
A Place Between The Tides, A Naturalist’s Reflections on the Salt Marsh. 2004. Vancouver: Greystone Books. “A note-perfect, intimate rendering of the bounty of life in a salt marsh in Nova Scotia… Set hypnotically against a year’s seasonal rhythms, his reflections on nature’s ebb and flow are a pure pleasure to read.” – Jury’s citation, 2005 British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. “Thurston combines the keen eye of the trained naturalist with the haunting lyricism of a poet ”–Atlantic Books Today.
Island of the Blessed, The Secrets of Egypt’s Everlasting Oasis. 2003. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. Published in U. S. as Secrets of the Sands, The Revelations of Egypt’s Everlasting Oasis. 2004. New York: Arcade Publishing. “Author, scientist, and environmental journalist Harry Thurston’s latest book combines the most winning elements of the travelogue and archaeological mystery while working in a timely environmental warning.” – Quill & Quire. March 2003. “Science writer Thurston takes an enchanting historical tour of Egypt’s deep Saharan oasis… Juicy archaeological journalism brimming with facts and speculation about the deep desert’s influence on Egyptian history.”–Kirkus Review, August 15, 2003.
The Sea Among The Rocks, Travels in Atlantic Canada. 2002. Pottersfield Press. “The Sea Among The Rocks is a valuable addition to the economic and environmental history of the region… The stories are masterfully told through the voices of the people who have lived through the changes.” – The Globe & Mail. Feb. 1, 2003.
The Nature of Hummingbirds, Rainbows on Wings. 1999. Vancouver: Greystone Books. “I looked for a book and found The Nature of Hummingbirds by Harry Thurston. Poet, traveller, journalist and naturalist Harry Thurston, who lives near Amherst, is one of Nova Scotia’s living treasures. And what he says about hummingbirds makes them more fascinating than ever.”–Silver Donald Cameron, The Chronicle Herald, Aug. 19, 2001.
The Atlantic Canada Nature Guide. 1998. Toronto: Key Porter. “Guides to the natural splendour of Atlantic Canada abound, but this is one of the special ones–the lucid expert direction of Thurston, arguably the region’s top nature writer, is matched by colour photography from another Atlantic pro, Wayne Barrett.–The Globe and Mail, Aug. 1/88
Against Darkness and Storm: Lighthouses of the Northeast, 1993. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing. “Against Darkness and Storm displays a fluidity that is rare even among the best writers. His style is a relaxed mix of fact, observation and opinion drawn together by anecdote and highly visual passages.” –Claudia Pinsent, The Chronicle Herald, July 2, 1993.
Tidal Life, A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy. 1990. Camden East, ON: Camden House Publishing. 2nd 1998. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing. “His description of the Bay of Fundy and its natural systems seems destined to outlive its original purpose and become a natural history classic.” – David D. Platt, HOLDING GROUND, The Best of the Island Journal, 1984-2004. Rockland, ME: Island Institute. “With this splendid book Thurston joins such distinguished company as Franklin Russell and Harold Horwood… he has constructed an eloquent, thoroughly researched prose narrative that is poetic without ever straining to be poetical.”–Robert Stacey, Quill & Quire, September 1990.
Atlantic Outposts.1990. Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press. Thurston’s book…offers that kind of rich social history you get from the writings of a keen and analytical yet compassionate observer. When you add the poet’s feeling for words, you get some truly fine writing… Atlantic Outposts provides an important contribution to our understanding of ourselves and our region. –Lorna Inness, The Chronicle Herald, Jan. 18, 1991. “Few books on Atlantic Canada–the most studied and least understood region in the country–catch the essence of life here as do these two [Atlantic Outposts and Tidal Life, A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy] by Harry Thurston…two books that explain how we live down here better than all the academic and government studies cluttering up library shelves–Jim Lotz, Canadian Forum, May 1991.
CITATIONS:
- “The Multitudinous Sparseness of Space in Harry Thurston’s Broken Vessel” by Leonor Maria Martinez Serrano, Univ of Cordoba, Spain. 2020. https://ojs.tnkul.pl/index.php/rh/article/view/14537/14181
- Atlantic Canada’s Poetic Menagerie: Animal Presence in the Poetry of John Thompson, Don Domanski, John Steffler, and Harry Thurston by
Tammy Lynn Armstrong. June 2014. https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/bitstreams/23a3777d-65bb-48a6-b330-ee5f304ca1ef/ - “Interview of Harry Thurston by Lisa Szabo-Jones”. The Goose. Issue 9, Summer 2011.
- “Breathing Books, Deranged Bodies: Reading and Writing Landscapes in the poetry of Harry Thurston” ISLE, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Winter 2003.
- “Harry Thurston’s Poetry” The Atlantic Provinces Book Review, Vol.13, No. 1.
- “A Spokesman for This Place,” Poetry Canada Review, Winter 1985-86.
- “Voices from The Maritimes,” Prism international, Spring 1980.