Gathering berries or information; hunting game, experience, or knowledge; we’re still essentially the children of our earliest ancestors. Stephen Brockwell’s latest collection, Fruitfly Geographic, examines the features of our nomadic trajectories with different lenses: the present moment, the collected or archived past and (im)possible futures. By turns objective, personal, quizzical, and ironic, these poems explore the influence of form on our perceptions. Brockwell takes a lens to geography and history as one might inspect a backyard insect in the afternoon — in doing so, he simultaneously magnifies and distorts our domestic microcosm.

Stephen Brockwell cut his writing teeth in the '80s in Montreal, appearing on French and English CBC Radio and in the anthologies Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry and The Insecurity of Art (both Véhicule Press, 1982). George Woodcock described Brockwell's first book, The Wire in Fences, as having an "extraordinary range of empathies and perceptions." Harold Bloom wrote that Brockwell's second book, Cometology, "held rare and authentic promise." Fruitfly Geographic won the Archibald Lampman award for best book of poetry in Ottawa in 2005. His most recent book is Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books published by Mansfield Press. Brockwell currently operates a small IT consulting company from the 7th floor of the Chateau Laurier and lives in a house perpetually under construction.

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