In Rare Sighting of a Guillotine on the Savannah, Michael Trussler engages with the beauty and violence manifested in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The poems here blur online reality with Zen Buddhism (relating the Japanese female anthropomorph Hatsune Miku to Basho), and explore humanity's changing relationship with "Nature" to gain a deeper understanding of language and technology. With thematic subtext pertaining to mental illness and aging, much of Rare Sighting of a Guillotine on the Savannah offers the sense that this subjective experience parallels the way our species has sabotaged itself. If these poems contain much grief, they also rejoice in the simplicity of light, the colours painters show, and the intricacy of what remains of the natural world.

Michael Trussler’s work engages with the beauty and violence of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from a neuro-divergent, fluid perspective. His writing encompasses several genres and modes of expression, ranging from the lyrical to the avant-garde. (An avid photographer, he sometimes blends Polaroid photography with text.) He is the author of ten books, including The History Forest, winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry; the short fiction collection Encounters, winner of the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award; and a memoir entitled The Sunday Book, which won the Saskatchewan Book Award in both the Non-Fiction and City of Regina categories. Deeply compelled by the natural world, Trussler hikes in the Canadian Rockies at every opportunity. He teaches English at the University of Regina. 10:10 is Michael Trussler’s seventh book of poetry.

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