In a world where upside-down politics dovetails with the carnivalesque, a love triangle unfolds between a belligerent Rooster, a happy-go-lucky meth-addicted Dog, and a gender-fluid Crow. Nason’s sixth poetry collection goes to the extremes of the creative mind to depict a world that is real and surreal, a place where women, men, and animals shape-shift and trade places, intermingle within each other’s feathers, coats, and skin. Sometimes these characters are the masters of decadence and desire, other times they question the very worlds they’ve invented. “Rooster Wears Stilts to the Pride Parade,” depicts a self-righteous, party-pooper bird shouting: Lower your banners, swallow your whistles! To hell with this stream of green, blue and youth.

Award-winning author Jim Nason has published five poetry collections as well as a short story collection. Spirit of a Hundred Thousand Dead Animals is his third novel. His stories, essays and poems have been published in journals and anthologies across Canada and the US, including Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2008, 2010 and 2014 and he has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Award in both fiction and poetry categories. Jim holds degrees from McGill, Ryerson and York Universities and is the owner/publisher of Tightrope Books, Toronto. He is the founder and organizer of Canada’s annual human rights poetry event, Meet Me in the Middle: Writers on Rights. Jim is a frequent participant on fiction and poetry panels, and Spirit of a Hundred Thousand Dead Animals was inspired at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival, where he was on a panel about sexuality in Canadian poetry.

Jim Nason's profile page

• Short-listed, Raymond Souster Award for Poetry