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Poetry Canadian

Scofflaw

by (author) Garry Thomas Morse

Publisher
Anvil Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2021
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781772141726
    Publish Date
    Apr 2021
    List Price
    $18

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Description

Scofflaw is a long poem, a playful exploration of Indigenous-Settler relations amid globalized pressures. For the most part, the poem is a lyrical dialectic flowing between a shadowy figure known as Scofflaw and an enigmatic "we." The content ranges from the effect of pesticides on Manitoba butterflies to the reworking of a John Newlove poem on Indigenous peoples to Native remains beneath the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The text culminates in a "lexicon standoff," where Scofflaw uses metaphysical means to avoid a character assassination, battling against the culling of words from the language.

About the author

Garry Thomas Morse’s poetry books with LINEBooks include sonic riffs on Rainer Maria Rilke’s sonnets in Transversals for Orpheus and a tribute to David McFadden’s poetic prose in Streams. His poetry books with Talonbooks include a homage to San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer in After Jack, and an exploration of his mother’s Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations ancestry in Discovery Passages (finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, also voted One of the Top Ten Poetry Collections of 2011 by the Globe and Mail and One of the Best Ten Aboriginal Books from the past decade by CBC’s 8th Fire), and Prairie Harbour and Safety Sand.Morse’s books of fiction include his collection Death in Vancouver, and the three books in The Chaos! Quincunx series, including Minor Episodes / Major Ruckus (2013 ReLit Award finalist), Rogue Cells / Carbon Harbour (2014 ReLit Award finalist), and Minor Expectations, all published by Talonbooks.Morse is a casual commentator for Jacket2 and his work continues to appear in a variety of publications and is studied at various Canadian universities, including UBC. He currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Garry Thomas Morse's profile page

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