A Current Through the Flesh weaves family history into an abrasive cloth from which Richard-Yves Sitoski tailors the full regalia-pre-moth-eaten and torn-of everyday life. To do so he traces traumas back three generations and across families to reveal the flimsiness of male self-images, the perils of silence, and the latent power of women oppressed by toxic beliefs. Above all, he asks what we owe our parents, when they both make and unmake us, when the line between innocence and guilt is erased, and when we find ourselves emulating those who hurt us most. He tackles these subjects with a dry and uncompromising humour that is the obverse not of tears, but of bewilderment.

Richard-Yves Sitoski is a songwriter, performance poet and the 2019-2023 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound. He is also the Artistic Director of the 2023 Words Aloud festival. He has released a spoken word CD, three books of verse with the Ginger Press, and a chapbook with Bywords.ca. He has given readings in industrial ruins, collaborated with red wigglers, and written poems on snow with biodegradable dye. His legacy project as Owen Sound Poet Laureate is No Sleep 'til Eden (Ginger Press, 2020), a multimedia collection of poems on the environment (and to his knowledge the first trade book of augmented reality poetry in Canada). In the winter of 2022, in response to the invasion of Ukraine, with Penn Kemp he co-edited Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine (profits from which have been directed to PEN Ukraine-sponsored programmes to assist displaced Ukrainian cultural workers). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Arc, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Watch Your Head, QWERTY, Train, and elsewhere. He was a finalist in the 2018 International Songwriting Competition, a 2021 Best of the Net nominee, the winner of the 2021 John Newlove Award, and a second-place winner of the 2022 Don Gutteridge Award--through which his full-length manuscript Wait, What? will be published by Wet Ink Press.

Richard-Yves Sitoski's profile page