Starting with lyric statement as a point of interrogation, Fortified Castles asks what might cause retreat into the comforting walls of the self. Moving from a tickertape tableau of economic and environmental crisis to the difficulty of finding one another in the streets, these poems locate the Western subject between the ramparts it walks and the barricades it throws up.

Composed in three sections, Fortified Castles constructs a complex web of interpersonal disconnection from the anonymous detritus of our self-obsessed neoliberal moment. Written contemporaneously with the 2008 economic crisis, the first section, “21st Century Monsters,” imagines a number of world-ending scenarios from the collapse of the environment to the collapse of capitalism to the collapse of culture, forming a questioning and questionable primer on the things that terrify us. The second section, “Fortified Castles,” heavily recombines found material in a lengthy serial collage composed of multiplied and impersonal personal statements that add up in unanticipated ways, cascading in knee-jerk patterns of anxious hand-wringing and stubborn unreasonableness.

Written during the 2011 Occupy protests, the final section, “Friendship Is Magic,” positions the hopeful connections of that moment beside the privilege rippling through it, interrogating the very real tension between working collectively and living comfortably.

ryan fitzpatrick is the author of two books of poetry and fifteen chapbooks, including Fortified Castles (Talonbooks, 2014) and Fake Math (Snare/Invisible, 2007). With Jonathan Ball, he edited Why Poetry Sucks: An Anthology of Humorous Experimental Canadian Poetry (Insomniac, 2014). He has participated in the literary communities of Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto. In Calgary, he was on the collective of filling Station magazine and was the organizer of the Flywheel Reading Series. In Vancouver, he earned his doctorate at Simon Fraser University, where he worked on contemporary Canadian poetry and space. In Toronto, he recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto Scarborough and was a co-organizer of the East Loft Salon Series with Rajinderpal S. Pal and Nikki Sheppy.

ryan fitzpatrick's profile page

“In Fortified Castles, our hero shakes down identities like a spike-filled log mashes down the meadow. In the fervour of a squint, fitzpatrick rakes the way for a honky-tonk revolution in a felt square to sip tonics of swell emotions much more dangerous than motorcycles. Fortified Castles simmers a deft cauldron of trend patrol – able to frack Kodak moments into bankrupt selfies and drain histories into broken presents. With sunshine enough to fill lonely bottles, fitzpatrick shoots a friendly neighbourhood spitball that props us up at the door of a room we live, long for, and long to leave, oh so thankful for its lock.”
– Chris Ewart, author of Miss Lamp

“With sunshine enough to fill lonely bottles, fitzpatrick shoots a friendly neighbourhood spitball that props us up at the door of a room we long for, and long to leave, oh so thankful for its lock.”
– Chris Ewart, author of Miss Lamp

“Darkly humorous and mockingly pedantic … Fitzpatrick also considers lyric poems themselves as fortifications, celebrating and safeguarding the sincere human voice. … Near the end, Fitzpatrick asks ‘How might we connect our cuffs?’—recognizing the ‘terrifying agency’ of sincerity – of meaning what we say – once we admit that we share grievances and complicities.”
– Matrix

"Through[out] Fortified Castles, fitzpatrick utilizes a kind of collage/cut-up method of accumulation to engage elements of the Occupy Movement, ...an endless series of phrases, consequences and histories, managing to capture an enormous amount of activity in such compact spaces.”
– rob mclennan’s blog

“…a blend of Calgary’s language-poetics and Vancouver’s social and political engagements … Through[out] Fortified Castles, fitzpatrick utilizes a kind of collage/cut-up method of accumulation to engage elements of the Occupy Movement, confusion, social interactions, financial anxieties, political uncertainties, ambiguous sentences and an endless series of phrases, consequences and histories, managing to capture an enormous amount of activity in such compact spaces. … Given some of the subject matter the book explores, keeping the reader slightly off-balance might be entirely the point. Given some of the subject matter, it would seem strange to attempt to craft poems that didn’t unsettle. Perhaps we should be far more unsettled than we are.”
– rob mclennan’s blog

“a strikingly balanced work … fitzpatrick writes from within ego-centric spheres, enraptured with selfies and branded personalities—indeed, our own fortified castles – to create paratactic lyric collages … Though at times the text seems to mock this culture, there is a strong undercurrent of hope. ”
– Canadian Literature

“…at turns whimsical, earnest, ironic, and confounding – often within the same poem. It’s a pleasure to wind through its twists and blind alleys.”
– this magazine

“Fortified Castles is a book full of twists: a series of ambiguous manuals, a book-length personality quiz gone terribly awry. At first glance, characters seem self-assured ... fitzpatrick’s playful voices point to a larger confusion. – Sandy Pool, author of Exploding into Night and Undark

“Fortified Castles is a book full of twists: a series of ambiguous manuals, a book-length personality quiz gone terribly awry. At first glance, characters seem self-assured – but don’t be fooled. Like Beckett’s talking heads, fitzpatrick’s playful voices point to a larger confusion. They look at us, baffled. They point and stare. They nod their heads and pat their stomachs. And then they ask, ever so politely: Who the hell are you?”
– Sandy Pool, author of Exploding into Night and Undark