Featuring psychic surfers, Shakespearian apes, vengeful dogs, and conspiratorial potatoes, this first major collection of poetry by a longtime veteran of Toronto's literary underground depicts a truly surreal world—all through the language of overheard conversation. Uproariously bleak, deceptively simple, and thoroughly danceable, the poems paint such pictures as a child born with the ears of a rabbit, a serial killer's home becoming a tourist attraction, and a hot-dog vendor awaiting the Pope at Paralysis Beach.

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell,” selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks. A long-time literary press activist, he is a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, Editor at Mansfield Press, and for eight years was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine. He is the author of two collaborative novels, two story collections, seven poetry books, and the novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew, which co-won the 2012 Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Fiction on a Jewish Theme. He has also published a collection of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer, and co-edited the anthology Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog won the 2010 ReLit Award for Short Fiction. His most recent poetry book is You Exist. Details Follow. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

Stuart Ross' profile page