A stunning collection from Governor General’s Award winner Roy Miki, Flow presents all of this critically acclaimed writer’s poetry – from his collections Saving Face, Random Access File, Surrender, There, and Mannequin Rising – as well as a substantial chapter of new, previously unpublished works. Including a foreword by poet and critic Louis Cabri, extensive interviews with Miki by the collection’s editor, Michael Barnholden, and an exhaustive bibliography, Flow is the definitive edition of Miki’s work. Also included are numerous full-colour photographs and photocollages, a practice Miki has become increasingly drawn to in recent years; in the book’s previously published sections and in the much-anticipated section of brand-new work, Miki’s poems and photographic works engage in a mutually enriching dialogue.

A Member of the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Roy Miki is one of Canada’s preeminent poets; he is also an influential critic, founder of the literary journal Line, and noted activist, instrumental in the movement for Japanese Canadian redress. All of Miki’s roles and concerns coalesce and interpollinate in his perceptive poems, which remain precisely attuned to the complex relationships between race, language, and power as they map and interrogate the layers of history enfolded within place and identity.

This is the fourth volume in a new series of collected works published by Talonbooks. The first three are Phyllis Webb’s Peacock Blue: The Collected Poems, Fred Wah’s Scree: The Collected Early Poems, 1962–1991, and Daphne Marlatt’s Intertidal: The Collected Earlier Poems, 1968–2008.

Roy Miki
Roy Miki is a writer, poet, and critic who has taught and written about the work of bpNichol for many years. He was the editor of Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka which won the 1997 Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. His major bibliographic study, A Record of Writing: An Annotated and Illustrated Bibliography of George Bowering, won the Gabriel Roy award from the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures as the best book on Canadian Literature for 1991. Miki is also the editor of This Is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians (1985); Tracing the Paths: Reading‚ Writing The Martyrology (1988); co-editor with Cassandra Kobayashi of Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement, and Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol.

Cassandra Kobayashi
Cassandra Kobayashi helped shape the grass-roots community movement in Vancouver to seek redress for the forced removal, internment, and abrogation of the rights of Canadians of Japanese ancestry. She served on the national Redress Committee that negotiated the historic 1988 settlement with the Government of Canada. The struggle for redress is documented in her book, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement, co-authored with Roy Miki.

Roy Miki's profile page

Michael Barnholden is a writer, historian, editor, translator, publisher, photographer, painter, and poet, living in Roberts Creek, British Columbia.His published titles include After the Horse Doctors: Baseball in Vancouver, Sweet Fuck All, Playing with Pain, Works That Way Because That’s the Way It Works: Collected Poems, Circumstances Alter Photographs: Captain James Peters and the War of 1885, Gabriel Dumont Speaks, Street Stories: 100 Years of Homelessness in Vancouver, Reading the Riot Act: A History of Riots in Vancouver, Writing Class: The Kootenay School of Writing Anthology, and On the Ropes.

Michael Barnholden's profile page

"Miki's reputation is that of an innovator whose work explores themes of race, class, politics and history."
—CBC Books

“I quite like that the collection ends with an interview with Miki, a focus on his own words on his work that I appreciate, providing multiple insights and entrances into his writing and thinking.”
—robmclennan