Readers: Jen Currin and Lisa McInnes

I step into the garment buildings,
a grammar dove under my arm,
a rustle in the back of my spirit.
Seaweed dresses sway on their hangers.
My voice frills as I call
to the chicken who knows
the way up the mountain.

Jen Currin’s acclaimed debut collection, The Sleep of Four Cities, announced the arrival of a fully formed, arresting new talent, and the poems in her new collection, Hagiography, see her trademark wordplay and entirely contemporary take on the surrealist image moving into new territory. These poems push life’s barely hidden strangeness into the light, and present thought as a bright, emotionally complex event. In Hagiography, mind and sense and the world they move through are interwoven to create a mysterious, familiar, vexing and continuously fascinating human drama.

There are no saints in Hagiography, but there are many curious characters looking for spiritual truth. Hagiography is populated by seekers: ghosts, spiders, sisters, pilgrims, children, tigers, therapists, witches, grandfathers and birds. Hagiography starts with death and ends with birth. In between, life after life.

‘Hagiography is a delight for the reader’s heart and mind – hagios, meaning sacred, plus graphein, to write. One lovely poem after another guides us through what holds us like a light.’ – Robin Blaser

‘Currin’s language is not so much surreal as it is devoted to the strangeness of what really happens to bodies and selves in the world … this book is a conversion narrative … it is a story of how we believe language can change and how we believe change can speak.’ – Aaron McCollough, author of Little Ease and Double Venus

Also available as a digital eBook.

In her ambitious follow-up to Hagiography, acclaimed poet Jen Currin continues her unique exploration of the surrealist lyric, constructing a strong case that, in these frightening times, it may be the best poetic mode for capturing the complexities of lived experience. In tongues alternately vulnerable, defiant, resigned, and hopeful, The Inquisition Yours speaks to the atrocities of our time – war, environmental destruction, terrorism, cancer, and the erosion of personal rights – fashioning a tenuous bridge between the political and the personal. Trying to make sense of a world where even language is ‘a danger,’ Currin’s poems reject the old storylines in favour of a vigilant awareness, and wonder what might happen if we ‘change the feared penmanship’ and embrace a narrative that empowers everyone.

Also available as a digital eBook.

Shortlisted for the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (B.C. Book Prizes), the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, and the Audre Lorde Poetry Award.

READERS: Jen Currin and a fantastic open-mic.

READERS: Jen Currin, Rachel Rose and Miranda Pearson,

READERS: Jen Currin and a surprise guest

READERS: Jen Currin, Gillian Jerome, Donato Mancini and Jeff Stautz.

Readers: John Barton, Elizabeth Colen, Jen Currin, Carol Guess, Lydia Kwa and Wayne Koestembaum.

In her ambitious follow-up to Hagiography, acclaimed poet Jen Currin continues her unique exploration of the surrealist lyric, constructing a strong case that, in these frightening times, it may be the best poetic mode for capturing the complexities of lived experience. In tongues alternately vulnerable, defiant, resigned, and hopeful, The Inquisition Yours speaks to the atrocities of our time – war, environmental destruction, terrorism, cancer, and the erosion of personal rights – fashioning a tenuous bridge between the political and the personal. Trying to make sense of a world where even language is ‘a danger,’ Currin’s poems reject the old storylines in favour of a vigilant awareness, and wonder what might happen if we ‘change the feared penmanship’ and embrace a narrative that empowers everyone.

Also available as a digital eBook.

Shortlisted for the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (B.C. Book Prizes), the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, and the Audre Lorde Poetry Award.