Jason Guriel and Carmine Starnino: Double Book Launch

Join us for a double virtual book launch for Jason Guriel’s FORGOTTEN WORK (Biblioasis 2020) and Carmine Starnino’s DIRTY WORDS: SELECTED POEMS 1997-2016 (Gaspereau Press 2020). Biblioasis is partnering with Bakka-Phoenix Books as the co-host. Tune in on October 1st at 7 PM for a reading and discussion. You could win a signed copy of one of their books!

We’ll be streaming the event live on on our Facebook page. The video link will be shared closer to the event date.

Carmine Starnino has published five collections of poetry, including This Way Out, which was nominated for the Governor General’s Award in 2009 and recently translated into French by Éditions Hashtag under the title, Par Ici La Sortie. His most recent collection is Leviathan. His other books include The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry and Lazy Bastardism, a collection of essays on contemporary poetry. In 2012, he was guest editor of Best Canadian Poetry in English. He has received numerous awards, including the CAA Prize for Poetry, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and the F.G. Bressani Prize, in addition to being shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Prize for the best first book of poetry. He lives in Montreal with his wife and three children.

In the year 2063, on the edge of the Crater formerly known as Montréal, a middle-aged man and his ex’s daughter search for a cult hero: the leader of a short-lived band named after a forgotten work of poetry and known to fans through a forgotten work of music criticism. In this exuberantly plotted verse novel, Jason Guriel follows an obsessive cult-following through the twenty-first century. Some things change (there’s metamorphic smart print for music mags; the Web is called the “Zuck”). Some things don’t (poetry readings are still, mostly, terrible). But the characters, including a robot butler who stands with Ishiguro’s Stevens as one of the great literary domestics, are unforgettable.

FORGOTTEN WORK is available as a paperback, ebook, or in a limited-edition hardcover.

ABOUT CARMINE STARNINO’S DIRTY WORDS:

Dirty Words offers a selection of Carmine Starnino’s best poems, drawing from his five published collections: The New World (1997), Credo (2000), With English Subtitles (2004), This Way Out (2009), and Leviathan (2016). Arranged chronologically, Dirty Words follows the development of Starnino’s formal and thematic preoccupations over two decades, revealing how his affinity for rhythm and sound, his muscular ratcheting of language, and his facility for keen observation and evocative description deepen with each new offering. While his poems and their subjects—such as relationships, family, Italian-isms, uprootedness, and masculinity—are nested in the familiar context of contemporary culture, Starnino’s particular artfulness with language and form result in moments of beauty and insight where the personal takes on transcendence. Yet always, his poems are rooted in elemental human experiences: as he writes in “The True Story of my Father,” I would like this, finally, to be a story of love. Visit Gaspereau Press‘ website to learn more about their books.

BAKKA-PHOENIX BOOKS:

Pick up a copy of FORGOTTEN WORK at Bakka-Phoenix Books or your other local independent bookstore. You can also pre-order it online:
https://www.bakkaphoenixbooks.com/