Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2013 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry (Manitoba Book Awards) If Lisa Robertson were to collide with David Lynch in a dark alley, the result would be a lot like The Politics of Knives. From shattered narratives to surrealistic fantasies, the poems in The Politics of Knives bridge the gap between the conventional and the experimental, combining the intellectual with the visceral. The complicity of language in violence, and the production of stories as both a defensive and offensive gesture, trouble the stability of these poetic sequences that dwell in the borderland between speaking and screaming. She made hyphens and made me use them. From her back she pulled brackets. Saying: "These in your throat and these around your neck." Jonathan Ball teaches English, film, and writing at two universities.
Trade Review'[Ball is] one of our most exciting young poets.' -- Robert Kroetsch 'Jonathan Ball's beautiful nightmares both disturb and entice.' -- Thomas Wharton 'I consider Jonathan Ball's Clockfire to be in the top handful of poetry titles last year in this country. No prize for him, alas, but lots of buzz and engagement and, for this reader in any case, the sense of a poet settling into the saddle for a while. Ball is a confident, smart poet. Very smart.' -- Sina Queyras 'While a fine example of contemporary poetic writing, Clockfire could also entertain a wider audience intrigued by fantasy that beaks out beyond genre borders.' -- Douglas Barbour
