nathan dueck thinks really hard about pop culture. In his new collection, A Very Special Episode, he pays serious attention to the pieces of our past that have been lost in the internet era, whether it is magnetic tapes or the Smurfs, rabbit-ear antennas or She-Ra. A child of the '80s dueck plays with the past and with our ideas of a poetry canon. In these playfully challenging recreations we find Mr. T in The Waste Land and a selection of sonnets – one for every letter of the alphabet – on topics from the Care Bears to Zoobilee Zoo. This is a smart, entertaining and ultimately questioning collection, one that asks us to consider how our ideas are shaped by the cultures surrounding us.

Nathan Russel Dueck lost a staring contest with his hometown of Winkler, MB, after eighteen years. He blinked and had to move away. He now lives in Cranbrook, BC, where he teaches English and Creative Writing at the College of the Rockies. He is the author of king's(mère) (Turnstone Press), he'll (Pedlar Press), and A Very Special Episode (Buckrider Books). In (1979- ), his debut memoir, Nathan says some things about himself that are (maybe) better left unsaid.

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"Dueck's [collection] takes pop-culture and television nostalgia to the next level by offering careful, complexly crafted creations that seek to splice Saturday morning camp together with musical meter."

Winnipeg Free Press