"If the loitersacke be gone springing into a taverne, I'll fetch him reeling out." "Loitersack" is 17th century slang for a lay-abed, a lazybones. In his new book, Loitersack, Donato Mancini (You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence, Bookthug, 2012) extends his inquiry of Canadian poetry and poetics in the form of a book that contains poetry, poetics, theory, theory theatre, and laugh particles. In many ways a companion piece to You Must Work Harder, Loitersack works through some of the problems and questions Mancini posed in that work, a more manifest (if not traditional) work of criticism. Loitersack is in some senses a commonplace book — a scrapbook of borrowed quotations — in other senses it is the poet's personal book of critical reflections, describing a broad topography of poetic knowledge. Like all Mancini's work, it's wired for explosive laughter; and as in all his previous work, Mancini sets out to write a book unlike anything else he — or anyone else, for that matter — has ever read.

Donato Mancini makes visual and procedural poetry, bookworks, and visual art. His books and chapbooks include Snowline (2015), Buffet World (2011), Fact ‘N’ Value (2011), Hell Passport no.22 (2008), Æthel (2007), 58 Free Coffees (2006), and Ligatures (2005). Notable exhibitions of Mancini’s visual artworks have included exhibitions through Artspeak, Western Front, Gallery Atsui, Malaspina Printmaker’s Society, and CSA. He performed with Gabriel Saloman in their noisepoetry/noisecomedy/noisemusic ensemble in the 2013 LIVE! Biennale of performance art, and as part of Concrete Scores at Open Space.Mancini’s published critical writing includes work on the archive, time, and memory in Anamnesia: Unforgetting (2011), and a discourse analysis of poetry reviews in You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence (2012). His previous full-length book, Loitersack (New Star, 2014), is a labyrinthine commonplace book where critical, theoretical, and paraliterary tendencies intersect in the forms of poetry, poetics, theory, theory theatre, laugh particles, and many, many questions. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of British Columbia.Talonbooks published his poetry book Same Diff in 2017.

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