Description
Nick Lowe wrote, "There stands the naked ape in a monkey suit." If he hadn't, Stephen Brockwell might have. Immune to the Sacred is loaded with the poet's trademark intelligence and dark humour. These poems, both artful and direct, strive to find sense in this stupid world, in stupid us. In the midst of the despair, a profound humanness and generosity emerge. Read this book by this underrated poetry superstar and watch "the sunlight catch / the satellite of your delusions / on its re-entry."
-STUART ROSS, author of Motel of the Opposable Thumbs
Open this book to an acutely intelligent mind coming to terms with nature, science, politics, beauty, and love. Stephen Brockwell is not really immune to the sacred. He is immune, maybe, to sclerotic systems of belief and ideologies, but he keens in on frigate birds, nesting tapirs, cats, and dogs. His poems are churchless choirs of daily misery and psalms looking for answers in the face of ecological degradation. His joy in the play of language and perception takes care of bad stuff: "My painted turtle dances for jars of flies." English-Brockwell knows this to the bone-is what we have, and making the best of it brings glee to the heart and mind. Who would find fault here: "We / aspire to more than the nothing the body / will retire to."? I love this book.
- JOHN FOY author of No One Leaves the World Unhurt, winner of the Donald Justice Prize
In Immune to the Sacred, Stephen Brockwell has extracted from the ether a marvellously intelligent and fully embodied collection of poems. An aversion to engrained obeisance has opened multiple doors to perception here-this is poetry of metaphorical and philosophical power.
About the author
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.
