Shearsman Books

Paperback, 104pp, 9x6ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9780907562801

Through a variety of approaches Chris Gutkind shows a self exploring and working itself out across a range of preoccupations. It is a journey from inside to outside, from the more hermetic to the more expansive and from him to you, perhaps into you.

This is a disturbed poetry. Identity might break apart or dissolve. Meaning can be hard to find. People become words or application forms. Supermarkets intoxicate us or maybe they innoculate us. A massacre expands through interpretation. Fish appear as toys. Flowers turn into data. A street might only be a screen. Our bodies dream of letting our organs swim free. Using a credit card is a kind of communion. Mobile phones are homes. Flesh is powered on. Machines wonder about us. Maybe all this is only one person’s horrifying ride though the period we live in but could it be that many of us are starting to experience these things?

Born in the Netherlands and raised mostly in Canada, Chris Gutkind has lived in London for many years, where he is a librarian at the School of Oriental and African Studies. This is his first collection of poetry.

"These highly cerebral, existential poems make interesting, if uneasy, reading." (Sarah Crown, The Guardian)

Download a sampler PDF of work from this book here

Read a review in Jacket here.

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