The moon migrates, seasons cycle, and the body ebbs and flows. Drawing together the skeins of existence and his family's nearness, Dennis Cooley's departures joyously intermingles poetry and science. In the end, faced with his own mortality, Cooley fights back with great big clods of earthy humour and humility.

With departures Dennis Cooley coils and uncoils the language of our bodies, the subtle string of cells and letters which bind us to each other and to language. The writing of grief is never simple, never clear-it is a tangled ball of ribbon, sound and story. Here Cooley unwinds and unweaves, reknits and retangles but is never at a loss of words.

-Derek Beaulieu, Calgary Poet Laureate

In departures Dennis Cooley wants to drive you home, but the car is dead, dead like the hospital food and the routines we normally accept when faced with mortal illness. Cooley stays alive in his music, the singer, the jester, the dancer in broken lines-he rejects the routine, finds the right found words, and sloughs off the dead language, death itself.

-Maurice Mierau, author of Autobiographical Fictions

What a delight to discover new work from Canada's preeminent literary trickster, Dennis Cooley. This gorgeous new book is a document of loss and leaving. But make no mistake, there is mind-bending wordplay and genre-defying experimentation in these pages too. Feelings, figures, and fonts collide in departures, Cooley's best work in a long while.

-Jon Paul Fiorentino

Dennis Cooley grew up in Estevan, Saskatchewan, and attended the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Rochester. He is an active member of the writing community in Winnipeg and teaches at St. John’s College, University of Manitoba. His latest book of poetry is the bentleys (2006).

Nicole Markotić is a poet and critic who teaches at the University of Windsor and edits the chapbook publication Wrinkle Press. She has published two poetry books, Connect the Dots and Minotaurs & Other Alphabets, as well as a fictional biography of Alexander Graham Bell, Yellow Pages. She is currently completing a novel.

Dennis Cooley's profile page

With departures Dennis Cooley coils and uncoils the language of our bodies, the subtle string of cells and letters which bind us to each other and to language. The writing of grief is never simple, never clear-it is a tangled ball of ribbon, sound and story. Here Cooley unwinds and unweaves, reknits and retangles but is never at a loss of words.

-Derek Beaulieu, Calgary Poet Laureate

In departures Dennis Cooley wants to drive you home, but the car is dead, dead like the hospital food and the routines we normally accept when faced with mortal illness. Cooley stays alive in his music, the singer, the jester, the dancer in broken lines-he rejects the routine, finds the right found words, and sloughs off the dead language, death itself.

-Maurice Mierau, author of Autobiographical Fictions

What a delight to discover new work from Canada's preeminent literary trickster, Dennis Cooley. This gorgeous new book is a document of loss and leaving. But make no mistake, there is mind-bending wordplay and genre-defying experimentation in these pages too. Feelings, figures, and fonts collide in departures, Cooley's best work in a long while.

-Jon Paul Fiorentino