Patternicity contains a suite of poems that won a 2008 CBC Literary Award and follows the author's debut book of poems, The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions, 2008). As a physiologist currently completing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, Johnstone's work is informed by a scientific approach, his own corporeal environment and an exploration of "the unreliability of language, regardless of how it's relayed."

Jim Johnstone is a Canadian writer, editor, and physiologist. He is the author of four books of poetry: Dog Ear (Véhicule Press, 2014), Sunday, the Locusts (Tightrope Books, 2011), Patternicity (Nightwood Editions, 2010) and The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions, 2008), as well as the subject of the critical monograph Proofs & Equational Love: The Poetry of Jim Johnstone by Shane Neilson and Jason Guriel. He has won several awards including a CBC Literary Award, Matrix Magazine?s LitPop Award, The Fiddlehead?s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and This Magazine?s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Currently, Johnstone is the Poetry Editor at Palimpsest Press, and an Associate Editor at Representative Poetry Online.

Jim Johnstone's profile page

• Short-listed, CBC Book Club's Bookie Award for Best Poetry Collection

This tight collection gains interest from the broad base of its scientific reference and historical scope, not
to mention its linguistic density and reach.
―Gillian Harding-Russell, Prairie Fire Review of Books

Award-winning and full of thought, Jim Johnstone brings readers a fresh experience with Patternicity. Seeking to explore language and how it often fails to truly get the message across, Patternicity is a read that shouldn't be missed by any poetry lover.
―Small Press Bookwatch (Oregon)

Patternicity transforms the mundane into the otherworldly ... it's a compelling system of thought.
―Mark Callanan, Quill & Quire

I love Patternicity for its dirty noises. These are stylized, energized, slightly alarming poems tilted by scientific perspectives and ridden with violence, "meat stink," blood and decay; poems that try to celebrate the "flanks / of hog, skinned heads lopped off / and honeyed." Jim Johnstone's forms are shapely, but feral. His music is beautifully rational, complex and charismatic.
―Carmine Starnino