Born in Montreal in 1946, Max now lives in Cheltenham, Ontario. He is the singer-songwriter son of Irving Layton. He has worked at jobs ranging from a BC lumber camp to laying track in Saskatchewan, picking tobacco to apprentice car mechanic. Later, he owned a bookstore, managed a subsidiary of McClelland & Stewart and owned his own publishing house. This is his first collection of poetry.

"Max Layton believes that when the rapture comes there will be no light show of rhetoric, no linguistic highjinking around – no, in that singular moment of revelation, in the directly spoken language which is the way of Max Layton’s poems, the word will become flesh and the flesh will meet bone." – Barry Callaghan