“These deeply engaging poems — courageous, shrewdly observed, disillusioned — give sharp, personal expression to the harsh-beautiful landscape of western Newfoundland and the human community precariously, stubbornly rooted there. A sense of conflict drives through this work, a reflection of the tradiitonal struggle to gain a living from the sea and rocky land but also a raw exploration of the conflict between poverty and privilege, honesty and propriety.” — John Steffler, author of Lookout
“Crow Gulch announces an important poet. The differences Douglas Walbourne-Gough explores between class and ethnicities are as hard as Newfoundland’s rock, as shifting as the foundations of a forcibly resettled Crow Gulch. This book is a conversation between a rude landscape, the displaced or dispossessed, and a narrator searching for belonging.” — Stephanie McKenzie, author of Before the Country: Native Renaissance, Canadian Mythology
“Bent low and clund to a coast, Walbourne-Gough lets the land shape him. Brilliant and weathered observation interlaces family and archive to render present and necessary the memory of Crow Gulch. Here is a day’s labour, a fretting walk along the tracks, a house ‘that lets in snow at the seams,’ grandmother's kitchen. Hear still ‘her peals of laughter against the far shore and all that lives on in this book.’” — Cecily Nicholson, author of Wayside Sang
“These poems convey the sensibilities of racialized, marginalized, working-class people whose rough lives are peppered with small pleasures like a warm featherbed and trout fishing with family, and with striking expressions of loyalty and affection. Following his ancestors, for whom a name could be ‘so wrought with work, so heavy, now, with love,’ the poet treats Crow Gulch as a place and a name that persists, ‘preceding and dragging / behind him like a loose bootlace.’” — Canadian Literature
“One of the most captivating elements of Douglas Walbourne-Gough’s Crow Gulch is the powerful humanism running through the collection.” — Miramichi Reader
“These poems challenge derogatory erasures and rework them by telling stories about the community’s inhabitants, drawn from oral histories, family memory, and imagining.” — PRISM
“Walbourne-Gough’s poems are intimate, in moments personal, often tracing family lineage. The poet’s questions are universal to those who seek, and anyone who has had a ruptured sense of belonging. His lyrical style grabs hold of you, and doesn’t let go.” — MUSKRAT
“A small stone, warm to the touch, mostly smooth but with just enough rough, satisfying edges to run your thumb along. That is the texture of Douglas Walbourne-Gough’s debut poetry book, Crow Gulch. It is a book of ‘hard beauty.’ . . . It is a stone worth keeping and returning to.” — The Fiddlehead
“I especially enjoyed ‘Influences’, a poem that looks back on the places . . . food . . . music . . . and people.” — Consumed by Ink
“Walbourne-Gough is so aware of and precise with words. . . . He disinters the houses, neighbours, and family from their scrapped, shunted-aside history, while reimaging and releasing his own past. Crow Gulch is superb.” — The Telegram
“Walbourne-Gough captures the woodsmoke and the indifferent slope of the land with a grace and a lust for language. . . [His] love for the land, for his family, and for his own ever-evolving identity shines through like the morning sun on a frozen gulch in Newfoundland, proving himself to be a rising star too bright and promising not to notice.” — Vancouver Weekly
“Engaging, tender, and astute. . . . Crow Gulch shows us a poet with a distinct style and pioint of view.” — Atlantic Books Today
“[An] impressive debut collection. . . . Walbourne-Gough conjures a landscape of harsh, rugged terrain in these vivid, image-driven poems.” — Toronto Star
