da Vinci Eye Finalist, Eric Hoffer Awards. Escape from Wreck City is a debut collection of poetry from Calgary author John Creary.

There are poems about nature, poems about love and relationships, poems about living in the city, and poems about traveling the world. And all at once they capture the thrill of being fully engaged with the world, keenly observing each moment and event that constitutes being human. Whether it's following the "wounded insomniac" through the "desert lushness of sage and creosote" or hot lovers who "flicker bare back beneath the full moon, panting" or drifting, moribund couples on empty streets moving like "dead meat or heavy traffic" under leaves of an "electric yellow" Creary's language is potent, lush, playful and witty, demanding of attention. Sharp with insights that cut, lancet-like, to the core of the matter, the poems in Escape from Wreck City – like the people who inhabit them – are ecstatically alive.

Advance Praise for Escape from Wreck City: "John Creary's poems growl, roar, whisper, chortle, purr and shout. He's a writer stoned on words, constantly surprised by what they can and can't do. Language's energy-clean, dirty, pulsing, spiking, minimalist-vibrates through Escape from Wreck City." - Tom Wayman, author of The Order in Which We Do Things

John Creary's profile page

John Creary has had his poetry widely published in Canadian literary journals including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011, Arc, Event, Grain, CV2, Fiddlehead, Vallum, subTerrain, and The Antigonish Review. He was awarded the Calgary Literary Kaleidoscope Undergraduate Award for Creative Writing in November 2008. His first book of poems, Escape from Wreck City, will be published in spring 2017 (Anvil Press). He currently lives in Calgary.