Bruce Hunter’s most recent collection of poetry, Two O’ Clock Creek, includes a poem titled “Towards a Definition of Pornography” that has earned him both praise and condemnation. The poem chastises certain parts of society for treating violence as scintillating entertainment. Hunter’s own family was deeply hurt by the poem because it revealed the family’s history of domestic violence, something they hoped to keep secret. But Hunter doesn’t like secrets. When families and communities keep heinous acts quiet, they allow the perpetrators to get away with their crimes. According to Hunter, poetry is one way to expose those skeletons.

“The secret of Jim Keegstra,” says Hunter, in reference to another poem in the collection about the infamous schoolteacher who taught his students the Holocaust never happened, “is that a lot of other people were complicit by not doing something. My question was, he did that for 11 years. He taught that the Holocaust didn’t happen. There was a school superintendent and there was a principal. But it was a single mother who complained — that led to that trial. Why did that happen?”

The book’s publisher says that Hunter’s love of people is evident in these poems. Hunter at first felt undeserving of such praise, but eventually agreed. He insists, however, that a love of people does not exclude questioning their actions and judgment or holding them accountable. For that reason, he doesn’t shy away from opening a Pandora’s box and showing his readers what’s inside.

Not all of his poems are so scathingly confrontational. Many are written in admiration of a particular individual. “The Beekeeper’s Daughter” shows some scorn for sexual stereotyping, but its main focus is on two teenage boys who are totally enamoured of a beautiful older woman. Hunter wrote the poem out of appreciation for a woman who dared to be different.

He also wrote the poem out of a respect for beekeeping — a fascination of the natural world is another major driving force behind his pen. “I love bugs, critters, horses and all kinds of stuff,” he says.

The title poem “Two O’ Clock Creek” represents an elevation of his love of the natural world to almost mythical levels. The title is the name of a creek in the Kooteney Plains area. If you drive by the stream in the morning, you won’t see a drop of water splashing over the rocks. But if you came back at around 2 p.m., you’d find a roaring torrent of ice-cold water. Why? Because way up the mountain sits a glacier that freezes solid overnight, but after a few hours of sunlight, produces a trickle and then a deluge.

“This is where I come to in my dreams,” says Hunter, quoting a line from his own verse. “In my poems and everything, there’s always something that’s rooted in there. This is where I go to and this is where I come to. It embodies just about everything. I love the physical place.”

He believes the tributary holds a mystical position within his life and his family. His great-uncle worked as a ranger in the Kooteney Plains area, which first led Hunter to the creek. Back in 2003, through a bizarre series of events, he came into possession of one of the oldest board signs built to identify the stream. And a few years ago, Hunter learned that a family member is actually buried at Two O’ Clock Creek. The poem and the place inspired him to write his novel In the Bear’s House, for which he won the 2009 Canadian Rockies Award at the Banff Mountain Festival.

Because the creek seems to hold a recurring role in his life, it only made sense to name his latest book Two O’ Clock Creek, a collection of some of the finest work he’s done throughout his career. “It’s daunting to read one’s life’s work. It’s intimidating actually. I haven’t written a lot, but I’ve been writing a long time, and this collection brings together a lot of terrain, both emotional and physical and social and political and historical. And there’s a lot of people. Most importantly, people.”