In A Cemetery for Holes, poetic language bends and breaks, resists and reforms under the stress of family trauma. Consensual reality shifts with nonconsensual harm. It is this history of violence which is ultimately, confronted, fought against, and overcome. While engaged in this struggle, the poems also strive to rebuild, to console and to rediscover the world, its beauty, tenderness, humour, and joy.

Tom Prime is in the PhD program at Western University in English. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Victoria (Specializing in Poetry). He has a BA at Western University. He has been published in Brave New Word, Carousel, Ditch, Fjords Review, The Rusty Toque, Lana Turner, Vallum, Watch Your Head, and others. His first chapbook, A Strange Hospital, was published on Proper Tales Press. His chapbook, Gravitynipplemilkplanet Anthroposcenesters, was published on above/ground press. This along with the two Serif of Nottingham chapbooks (Birds are the birthmarks of flight and Throat Fixtures: The Almanack of Dazzle) are collaborations with Gary Barwin. His most recent pamphlet, Common Stock, is on Blasted Tree Press. His collaborative collection of poems written with Gary Barwin, A Cemetery for Holes, is available from Gordon Hill Press. His debut solo collection, Mouthfuls of Space, is scheduled for publication on the Feed Dog imprint of Anvil Press this coming September.

Tom Prime's profile page

The author of more than twenty books of poetry, fiction and books for children, Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist from Hamilton, Ontario and the author of the nationally bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Penguin Random House Canada) which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award; and For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019.)
A finalist for the National Magazine Awards (Poetry), he is a three-time recipient of Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year, has also received the Hamilton Arts Award for Literature and has co-won the bpNichol Chapbook Award and the K.M. Hunter Arts Award. He was one of the judges for the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize. Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at Western University, Hillfield Strathallan College and McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library. His writing and recordings have been published/released in hundreds of magazines and journals internationally—from Readers Digest to Granta. He is on the organizing committee for Hamilton’s LitLive Series and regularly presents, performs and exhibits in the city.

Gary Barwin's profile page