In Deepfake Serenade, Chris Banks’s sixth poetry collection, irreverent charm, emotional distance and surprising hot takes leap off every page. He writes in the title poem, “Inside every one of us is a deepfake. A holy ghost,” suggesting people have a choice to feel either like sad imposters or, if they're brave, like survivors staring down a world both utterly familiar and strange. These poems, sometimes narrative, sometimes surreal, oscillate between these two extremes as they confront middle age, new love, renewed optimism and memories, all with Banks’s signature wit and inventiveness. This collection is for anyone who has ever wished to wear “a halo of knowing,” or to be “the sparks flying” when outer phenomena and inner impulses collide. “Earn your rewards,” Banks writes in one poem, and we do, with every turn of the page.

Chris Banks is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Midlife Action Figure (ECW Press, 2019). His first full-length collection, Bonfires (Nightwood Editions, 2003) was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for Poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, GRIFFEL, American Poetry Journal, PRISM International, among other publications. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

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