The idea for this collection was to offer a tip of the hat to people whose lives and/or works have influenced the author. Each piece is forwarded by a short background story as well as an epigram which provides some descriptive entry and flavour. The key was to construct these pieces in the author's own style and voice and not fall into simple mimicry. Many names have been encrypted into the pieces as fractured homonyms, a sort of pun for the astute reader.

Born in Vancouver, Stan Rogal now lives in Toronto. He ran the popular Idler Pub Reading Series for ten years, was co-creator of Bald Ego Theatre, and is now the artistic director of Bulletproof Theatre. He is the author of the novel, The Long Drive Home (Insomniac, 1999), and numerous poetry collections, including Geometry of the Odd, (Wolsak & Wynn, 1999), In Search of the Emerald City (Seraphim, 2004) and Fabulous Freaks (Wolsak & Wynn, 2005). Lines of Embarkation is Stan's fifth book of poetry.

Stan Rogal's profile page

Stan Rogal's latest collection, After Words, offers a series of scintillating poetic responses to authors and artists from the recent and distant past. Rogal's sophisticated awareness of poetic possibilities gestures to what happens outside the conventions of language, tilting beyond words, while pursuing after words. Throughout these meta-poetic portrayals, Rogal's autobiographical narrator inhabits the realms of literary and artistic precursors including Artaud, Atwood, Bogart, Burroughs, Calvino, Cohen, Eliot, Nin, and Shakespeare. A series of brilliant tours-de-force while providing an inspirational tour of the art of words. - Karl Jirgens, Editor Rampike