In the early 1980's, serial killer Clifford Olson rampaged through the lower mainland of British Columbia, raping and murdering eleven victims. His heinous cash-for-bodies deal foreshortened his trial, and resulted in the law currently on Canadian books that forbids criminals from benefiting financially from their crimes.
Olson was just the pimple on the hide of a misogynist culture, as this long poem sequence attests.
Sometimes a book project chooses its author, as this one did when the author recognized one of the victims from her photograph.
Richard Stevenson was born in Victoria, B.C., in 1952 and has lived in western Canada and Nigeria. A college English teacher by profession, he taught English, Canadian and African literature, Business Communication, Creative and Technical Writing, E.S.L., and humanities courses in high schools and colleges. A former Editor-in-Chief of Prism international, he served in various editorial, jury, and writing/arts group executive capacities. His own reviews and poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, anthologies, e-zines, and journals published in Canada, the United States, and overseas. He performed with the jazz/ poetry group Naked Ear and rock music/YA verse troupe Sasquatch, and occasionally puts other ensembles together for book launches and performances and reviews books.