Joy & sorrow; Sorrow & Joy-musings on mining, family, Latin America and society

The poems in Joy and Sorrow; Sorrow and Joy are salt of the earth—playful, jubilant, calm, and wise. Covering vast terrain from 1965 to the present day, Vancouver, B.C. to the El Mochito Mine in Honduras, Sean P Daly details the quiet heroism of everyday labourers—geologists, miners, fishermen—and the values of family and creativity. This collection also includes a selection of idioms and expressions, many of them passed on to the author by a wise grandmother from El Salvador. These poems bring a humble voice to the landscape of contemporary Canadian poetry. This is from my editorial evaluation.

Most of these poems are from the direct experience of the author, be it working at a mine or in mineral exploration, mostly in Canada but also in Latin America, or with my family and including both sorrow and joy with the short life of my son, or philosophizing about life, or talking about people's heroes like David Thompson, the great Canadian surveyor and explorer and friend of the First Nations, or Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of South America who took on a whole empire with complete faith in his fellow latinos and their ability to defeat the Spanish Empire. Also, there is the joy of spending winter time in Mexico with its' warmth and gorgeous flowers and luxurious vegetation.