From poet-provocateur Moez Surani comes Operations—a book-length poetic inventory of contemporary rhetoric of violence and aggression, as depicted through the evolution of the language used to name the many military operations conducted by UN Member Nations since the organization's inception in 1945.
With Operations, Surani draws on contemporary poetic traditions, including conceptual and inventory poetics, to accomplish two important things: On the one hand, he shows that no word is free from connoting violence, while on the other hand, he provokes readers to consider whether their personal values match the values of the military operation that are conducted by their countries.
By pulling military language away from euphemism--effectively, making it account for its doublespeaking ways—Operations gives voice to the many lives lost in conflicts around the world, in a volume that will speak equally to lovers of contemporary poetry, language, and linguistics, as to readers interested in politics, international relations, and public discourse.

Moez Surani has travelled, studied, and worked in countries around the world. His writing has been featured in numerous publications, including the Best Canadian Poetry (2013 and 2014), The Walrus, The Globe & Mail, Harper's Magazine, and PRISM International. His first poetry collection, Reticent Bodies (Wolsak and Wynn), was published in 2009. In that same year, he won a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and later, attended artists' residencies in Italy, Finland, Latvia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Canada. His second poetry collection, Floating Life (Wolsak and Wynn), was published in 2012. “???” Operación Opération Operation “” O???????, Surani's third book, was a finalist for Les Figues Press Book Prize (2014), and is forthcoming from BookThug in the fall of 2016.

Moez Surani's profile page