Book, or laboratory? Reader, or specimen?

Wide slumber for lepidopterists is a poetic fantasia, a disorienting yet compelling dreamscape of butterflies and caterpillars and killing jars, where the waking mind’s prose transforms into the sleeper’s poetry. Each poem unfolds with precision, tracking the stages of sleep and pairing them with the life cycle of Lepidopterae. Insomnia is mirrored in the birth of the egg, narcolepsy in larval hatching. And when the caterpillar starts its final moult, dreams begin, weaving around us as tightly as a cocoon until we are somnambulant, a chrysalis ready to emerge as a moth.

Reading the act of sleep through pupae and moths seems incongruous, but from this unlikely premise comes a darkly erotic text that takes cues from the scientific fascination of Christopher Dewdney, the linguistic experimentation of Gertrude Stein and the aural environments of Björk toexplore science, sexuality and language in equal parts.

Wide slumber for lepidopterists contains luminous illustrations by artist and bookmaker Matt Ceolin, who has managed to capture the spirit of the poems with his beautiful and disturbing treated photographs of butterflies, moths and dessication.

A. rawlings' profile page

Matt Ceolin's profile page

a.rawlings is a poet, editor and multidisciplinary artist. In 2001, she received the bpNichol Award for Distinction in Writing upon graduating from York University. Since then, she has worked with many literary organizations; highlights include co-founding The Lexiconjury Reading Series and developing creative-writing workshops for youth. She recently co-edited Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press). Angela spent her formative years in Sault Ste. Marie and now lives in Toronto.