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Poetry Canadian

IKMQ

by (author) Roger Farr

Publisher
New Star Books
Initial publish date
Jul 2012
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554200641
    Publish Date
    Jul 2012
    List Price
    $16.00

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Description

Roger Farr's IKMQ consists of sixty-four brief passages — stories, descriptions, instructions, scenarios, formulae — each involving the characters represented by the letters I, K, M and Q. Various clues, suggested by the rules of grammar and syntax, hint at connections and continuities, and at narrative peaking out from behind the screen of action. But never mind the theory — enjoy the ride, as I, K, M and Q convert houses to commercial grow-ops, manufacture explosives, go all in on the flop, get up early to catch chinook, plan, build and sell subdivisions, conduct meetings according to Roberts, plot a prison break, score an all-important goal, get the door for the pizza delivery boy, and get on with transforming the world through their revolutionary action.

IKMQ was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.

About the author

Described as "a poet of great heart and aesthetic/political commitment", Roger Farr is the author of five books of poetry: Surplus (2006), Means (2012), IKMQ (2012), a finalist for the BC Book Prize in Poetry in 2013, I Am a City Still But Soon I Shan't Be (2019), and most recently, After Villon (2022). The Amorous Comrade, a collection of essays on anarchism and sexual politics, is forthcoming in 2024.

 

 

 

A former member of the artist-run Kootenay School of Writing collective, his critical writing on avant-garde poetics and radical social movements has appeared in Anarchist Studies, Armed Cell, Fifth Estate, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, The Poetic Front, West Coast Line, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. He edited the three-volume anthology Open Text: Canadian Poetry and Poetics in the 21st Century (2008-2013), and was Critical Editor for Alice Becker-Ho's The Essence of Jargon: Argot & the Language of the Dangerous Classes (2015). Recent writing appears in Geist, SOME, SUBterrain, and Tripwire.

 

 

 

Since 2001, he has taught at Capilano University, where he has acted as a Board Member and Advisory Editor for The Capilano Review, Curator of the Open Text Reading Series, Editor of CUE Books, and Convenor of the Creative Writing Program.

Roger Farr's profile page

Awards

  • Short-listed, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

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