Half wisecracking tour guide and half flirtatious trick, the poems in Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe examine how we respond to overwork and overstimulation. McCann’s third collection speaks to a world that is too busy and too anxious, delivering the material with zero reverence and with loads of self-deprecating, disarming, observational - and sometimes catty - humour. Inviting readers to be his “bandmates / on life’s slutty bus tour,” Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe marks a fresh new direction in Marcus McCann’s poetics.

“McCann’s work is a must for any lover of poems.”—Northumberland Today

MARCUS McCANN (he/him) is a lawyer who has been involved in a number of high-profile legal projects in the areas of sexuality and LGBTQ rights. He is a former managing editor of Xtra in Toronto and Ottawa. The author of three previous books, his writing has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert and Robert Kroetsch awards, and won the John Newlove Award and the EJ Pratt Medal for poetry. Born in Hamilton, Marcus now lives in Toronto.

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"Swaying flirtatiously between themes of aging, apology, self-awareness, and sex, poet Marcus McCann’s tight, percussive compositions – which are best read aloud, slowly, and with someone listening – are a reminder of why intimacy, along with all its attendant disappointments, is still worth striving for."—Quill & Quire's 2017 Books of the Year reviewers' picks

“McCann’s work is a must for any lover of poems.”—Northumberland Today

“Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe offers wry commentary on the modern world’s miniature nightmares.”—Winnipeg Free Press

“Marcus’ poetry collects the anxieties built from a combination of interactions within the city, between people, and with oneself. We are asked to slow our pace a heartbeat and observe those interactions. Document the anxieties. Laugh at them a little. Marcus guides us through a Toronto where the calm exists within the chaos, and we are only a car wreck away from finding it.”—Broken Pencil

“The poems that make up Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe are, one might say, an incredible mouthful: smart and sassy, thoughtful and wise, thick with swagger, impulse and a great deal more experience than his prior two collections.”—rob mclennan

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