Description
Mycological Studies is a cross-fertilization of language and fungus, exposing the similarities between the two species. Just as mushrooms sprout suddenly and explosively, so does language ...
Jay MillAr's second collection of poems looks at the world of mushrooms through a kaleidoscope of perspectives and styles, ranging from innovative and constraint-based writing to visual and concrete poetry. This book makes a unique contribution to the poetry of science and nature; if mushrooms have a language that is spoken to us or through us as hallucinogenic experiences, MillAr has managed to tap into that language and refine it into potent poetic form.
'As readers,' says MillAr, 'we witness that which occurs on and above the surface of language. Meanwhile, the fungal threads themselves, lying beneath or between the letters, faithfully connect each piece of the whole to all of the others in a particular order forever unknown to the reader.' Mycological Studies is an uncanny book, one that suggests that the divides between the sentient and the unconscious are frequently bridged in subtle and mysterious ways.
About the author
Jay MillAr is a Toronto poet, editor, publisher, teacher, and virtual bookseller. He is the author of False Maps for Other Creatures (2005), Mycological Studies (2002), and The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (2000). His most recent collection is the small blue (2007). In 2006 he published Double Helix, a collaborative "novel" written with Stephen Cain. Millar is the shadowy figure behind BookThug, an independent publishing house dedicated to cutting edge work by well-known and emerging North American writers, as well as Apollinaire`s Bookshoppe, a virtual bookstore that specializes in the books that no one wants to buy. A long-time fixture of the Toronto writing and publishing scene, Jay has participated in such diverse projects as the UNBC/Via Rail Poetry Train, The Scream in High Park, Test Readings Series and Influency: A Poetry Salon. He is also the co-editor (with Mark Truscott) of BafterC, a small magazine of contemporary writing. Currently Jay teaches creative writing at George Brown College. Singled out in the introduction of The New Canon as a `young firebrand` (which he reads as `troublemaker`) working against what some hold dear to poetic tradition, Jay is one of Canada`s voices of authority and risk on innovative, experimental, contemporary poetry.
