Rex Brown is no stranger to Grenfell Campus.

The former project manager of "The March Hare" engaged with students, faculty and staff for decades, encouraging new and veteran writers and musicians to take part in the literary and music festival.

Building on the festival's 32-year stretch, Brown has recently released "Twine Loft: Stories and Sayings from the Oral Tradition."

He has this to say about his motivation and rationale for writing the book:

"The odd person, while fully acknowledging that the past is 'a bucket of ashes,' is still inclined to root among them, not to rekindle any flame but, rather, to celebrate that there are ashes to root through. For someone born in Newfoundland while we were still ourselves - not yet one distinct part of Canada - the rooting might be perceived as nostalgic or, worse still, nationalistic, but I think not. It has to do with attachment to place. And of course, there is no place without people. My hallowed Tack's Head is scenery, endlessly duplicated across a wider, beautiful world. But it's more than scenery to me. People wandered about once upon a time; their voices are ashes now, but I hear them still. I want to share what I hear, so I write.

Hopefully the words add up to allow the reader to hear echoes of voices from the Newfoundland that no longer is. The stories span a lifetime. The Tack's Beach of my youth features prominently. The place is a page I cannot turn. So, too, resettlement keeps cropping up. Over fifty years on, I haven't moved on from whence I'd sprung. God willing, I never will. Once outport life was behind me, I tried my best to prosper on the mainland. It's been a wonderful fine run here on the island, rooted in Corner Brook. Along the way, a story or two worth telling made an appearance - stories mostly about people, people comparable to the heroes of my youth."

"Twine Lost"'s sayings and stories date back as far as the 1950s, when Brown was growing up in Tack's Beach, Placentia Bay, in the days before resettlement. There, words spoken caught his ear, as have other colourful phrases since. Some stories highlight what life was like in "them days" and what life became after relocation. All tellings are based upon recollections, as factual as human memory allows. The stories are vignettes of a lifetime spent amongst diverse authors and artists in Newfoundland, a place unique, where the oral tradition no longer holds sway but where storytellers linger."

"'Twine Loft' exposes the differences and similarities between the oral and written, the spoken and read," said Dr. Stephanie McKenzie, Grenfell English professor and writer of the book's afterword and co-editor. "It is the overlapping of oral and written traditions, as well as the differences between them, that draws attention to how Rex's voice has been endorsed by a large public and why it is important to listen to him."

She pointed out that Brown himself advocated "this book is meant to be read aloud."

"Rex's voice has been validated by over sixty years of listening to and learning stories and histories from Newfoundland and, in a manner which is comparable to written traditions, by 'publishing' them," said Dr. McKenzie. "Serving as project manager for The March Hare for decades, where he invited and showcased an incredible number of Newfoundland and Labrador's most-loved voices, his choices were those of a publisher, as it were - one who vets an artist's work (whether it be written or sung), and one who shares it with a public."

To learn more about "Twine Loft," visit Flanker Press.

Title: Twine Loft: Stories and Sayings from the Oral Tradition
Author: Rex Brown
Editors: Teri-Ann McDonald, Stephanie McKenzie
Contributor: Stephanie McKenzie
Publisher: Flanker Press Limited, 2021
ISBN: 1774570440, 9781774570449
Length: 164 pages