Description
Book SynopsisOn CBC Books' list of 29 works of Canadian poetry to watch for in spring 2020
In Tanja Bartel’s riveting poetry debut, the bucolic Vancouver suburbs clash with the interpersonal. The reader dips into the lives of individuals whose day-to-day is anything but peaceful, altered by luck and choice, fear and failure. In poems that light upon themes such as regret, guilt, and human empathy, Bartel highlights the arbitrary nature of life and the demons that persist within.
Unsentimental and blunt, but ultimately forgiving, Everyone at This Party scans the suburbs and tries to make sense of our private selves.
Trade Review"The long party of modernity is almost over, the food and drink all but done. Yet still revelers rage into the night light-headed, quixotic, and heedless.
Everyone at This Party is alive to the strange and provocative peculiarities of this moment. These are surreal and revelatory poems in which 'the predictability of eulogies offers zero comfort' while a 'neighbour removes the earth’s crust with a pressure washer.'" -- Adam Dickinson, author of
Anatomic"
Everyone at This Party delves into a person’s relationship to their environment, their peers, and themselves in a seemingly cynical and yet humorous, honest, and lighthearted way." -- Emma Rhodes *
Miramichi Reader *
