You've heard of The Big Sleep, right? Well, it's a new century – time for The Ubiquitous Big

Anyone with even a modest fetish for cultural icons from the 40s and 50s will love the way pulp fiction, fashion, media war coverage and movies are splintered and reconfigured in The Ubiquitous Big. Samuels reveals how timely that period was while he simultaneously exposes our present-day reliance upon these things as cultural and historical motifs. Samuels examines the past in order to ironically question 'what is now?'

The Ubiquitous Big imagines life in the age of hyper-modernity as a play with a splintered script and countless actors, its narratives unfolding against a backdrop of cultural obsessions with iconic celebrity, physical beauty, war and conquest. Built around helter-skelter transformations of found text, film-noir dialogue and overheard conversation, this is our world seen from atop a narrow ledge between horrified fascination and sardonic humour. The result is a book of playful poetry with a serious trigger finger.

Ian Samuels is a former editor of filling Station magazine and currently works at WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival. He is the author of one previous collection of poetry titled Cabra (Red Deer Press, 2000). He lives in his hometown of Calgary, where he is currently working on a mythic history of once-famous blues venue the King Edward Hotel.

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