BC Poetry 2017: "Bad Engine" by Michael Dennis (Anvil Press)

in the backyard

a lie is a lie 
is sitting on your couch
eating out of the cat’s dish
hiding in the backyard
between
garbage cans 

Who?

Michael Dennis has been hammering his love, his anger, his grief, and his awe into poems for over forty years. With seven books and nearly twenty chapbooks to his credit, Dennis isn't exactly a household name in Canadian poetry, but he is a natural heir to poet like Canadian icon Al Purdy and American legends Eileen Myles and Charles Bukowski. His poems are his life made into poems: direct, emphatic, honest.


What?

Bad Engine brings together mostly revised versions of about one hundred poems selected from Dennis’s published work, along with several dozen new poems. This volume, introduced and edited by Dennis’s long-time friend, the poet and editor Stuart Ross, marks a milestone in the career of a homegrown, no-bullshit, tells-it-likes-he-sees-it populist bard. Here the reader will find a rollicking tale of drinking with racists, poignant prayers for quiet nights with lovers, raw narratives of childhood abuse, defiant anthems of a body broken by sports injuries, a mindful meditation about a stoned dragonfly, and the not-quite-resigned laughter of a man smashing away at a keyboard for four decades and becoming neither rich nor famous.


When?

Arrived April 2017.


Where?

Book Launches: Unknown!

Purchases: From the Anvil Press website or at your local bookstore. $20.


How?

Drinking with racists, praying with lovers, meditating about stoned dragonflies.

Anvil Press * About This Series * More Books, Please!

The copyrights of all poems included in the series remain with their authors, and are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.