Passion, obsession, addiction, vision, and despair — these are just a few of the themes explored by Mitchell Parry in this poignant portrait of Austrian poet Georg Trakl. Born in Saltzburg in the second half of the 19th century, Trakl was severely addicted at an early age. He smoked opium and later took up chloroform, alcohol, and cocaine. He was passionately obsessed with his younger sister, witnessed the bodies of partisans hanging in trees, and attempted suicide on more than one occasion. He died at the age of twenty-four, leaving behind a legacy of poems that capture the anxiety, passion, and exhaustion of early twentieth-century Austria and the years leading up to the First World War.

Using Trakl as a lens, Parry explores the world of Freud, Wittgenstein, Rilke, Klimpt, Kakoschka, Loos, Kandinsky, and Klee, a time when Europe is drawn through the crucible of Modernism. In this blend of fact and fiction, poetry and prose, Parry flirts with darkness, plunging into a sordid and dangerous world and exploring the complex relationship between poetry and extremity. The result is both chilling and glorious.

Born in Etobicoke, ON, Mitchell Parry spent part of his childhood in Manchester, England. He obtained a Masters of Arts from the University of Western Ontario in English Literature and Film Studies. He has been an ESL teacher and an arts administrator and has worked in film production in Calgary and Montreal. Parry is a frequent contributor to The Malahat Review and has written many reviews and articles. His own poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, Event and The Malahat Review. He won The Antigonish Review's Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest in 2002 and Pottersfield Portfolio's Sixth Annual Compact Poetry Competition in 2001. Mitchell Parry currently divides his time between Victoria, where he teaches film studies at the University of Victoria, and Pender Island where he lives with his partner, poet Marlene Cookshaw.

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"Mitchell Parry’s imaginative, sometimes hallucinogenic, response to Georg Trakl's hothouse family and his intimate life and times is a gut-wrenching read. Imperfect Penance takes us through a journey of incestuous desire, drug addiction, war, and suicide. What to say about poems drenched in the 'green dreams of chloroform'? Harrowing yes, but fascinating, too. Darkly brilliant."

Patricia Young