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Poetry Canadian

oems

by (author) Matthew Tomkinson

Publisher
Guernica Editions
Initial publish date
Nov 2022
Category
Canadian, Typography, Digital
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771837637
    Publish Date
    Nov 2022
    List Price
    $20.00

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Description

oems is a collection of thirty-six lipogrammatic poems composed entirely of flat words such as “sunrise” or “unconsciousness,” which contain no ascending or descending letters. Proceeding from the author’s lived experience of OCD, the book leans into obsessive-compulsive tendencies, attempting to exorcise them through overuse. In the spirit of rumination, these poems repeatedly circle one nagging question: namely, the matter of what remains after language has been sifted and sorted, sandpapered and planed. In chasing the frisson of a polished stanza, oems performs a personal reckoning with the pleasures of fixation, the virtues of sublimation, and the costs of erasure.

About the author

Matthew Tomkinson is a writer, composer, and doctoral candidate in Theatre STudies at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of For a Long Time, a chapbook out with Frog Hollow Press, and the coauthor of Archaic Torso of Gumby, an experimental short fiction collection out with Gordon Hill Press.

 

Matthew Tomkinson's profile page

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