"An immense precision is necessary," announces Edward Carson in Bird Flock Fish School , a collection of poetry that sees language as an example of "emergence," the spontaneous interaction of behaviours by which birds flock and fish travel in schools. These shimmering poems-which attempt to surprise the reader out of familiar ways of understanding nature, mortality, loss and love-articulate a vast, roving philosophical curiosity channelled through urgent form. Using a voice both sophisticated and simple, forged in unadorned couplets tuned to near-hallucinatory clarity, Carson's poems invent a new way of perceiving, a world where "everything unites, at odds with itself."

Edward Carson is twice winner of the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award in Canada, and is the author of a previously published book of poetry, Scenes. Over the past thirty years he has pursued a variety of careers involving the word, including co-founder/editor of the literary periodical, Rune, and lecturer in English Literature at the University of Toronto. He has served as president of several major book publishing companies, including Penguin Group (Canada), Pearson Technology Group Canada, Distican (Simon and Schuster), HarperCollins Canada, and, while head of publishing, founded the successful indigenous publishing list of Random House of Canada.

Throughout his publishing career he taught the business of publishing at Ryerson University, Humber College, and as co-director of the Banff Publishing Workshop. He also has participated on various Boards of Directors, including PEN Canada, BookNet Canada, and is a past president of the Canadian Publishers` Council. At present he is Chief Business Officer and Associate Director, University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies.

Edward Carson's profile page

"These uncommonly direct, deviously wrought poems show scant care for poetic fashion and no fear in addressing, head-on, what we all like to pretend isn't the quandary: 'We're not at all sure, before/ knowing them, what we see is real,/ what we see emerging and disappearing before us,/soon vanishes for good.' That's gorgeous, as is so much else here." -Kevin Connolly