first review

It seems that if I write a post about someone, they publish a review of The Other Side of Ourselves within 24 hours. I'll keep this in mind going forward.

Michael Lista has my book's first review up on the National Post book site, "The Afterword" - it's a double-shot with a review of Nick Thran's Earworm, which I'm keen to pick up. You can read it here.

It's a mixed review. I expected to receive most of the criticisms at one point or another, my aesthetic not overlapping with those of many people these days. If I take one exception to the review, it's that placing locational tags on three of the poems was "vain and self-canonizing" - it was only meant to be generous to the reader and respectful of the locations (especially the Ghanaian ones, which are too often lumped into a blurry, homogeneous "Africa"). Oh well.

The compliments at the end of the review were less expected, and well appreciated.

Thanks to Michael for taking some time with my book, and to NP Books for continuing to make space for poetry on their site.