the pet radish, shrunken

Article on the radish,
Info kit on the book
A side project from the book is a web app generator of matryoshka words at W ell that puts.
Won the 2015 Lampman Poetry Award.
Listen to the book’s entry music by musician/composer Jennifer Pederson.

Post-modern. Post-lyric. Sure explorations of journeys outward and onwards, inward lingward and lungward.

“Pirie’s poems are protean that way, shifting and blurring. These are poems for an age of media that compete with poems, where “the serenading tv & computer screens sing / bombs, toss some open threats & insomnia aids.” They flit to express flickering identities, flail to capture relationships.[…] Pirie’s produced a poetry of pixels, of images that flash once then are gone.”—Jonathan Ball at Winnipeg Free Press

“virtuosity w/language is something to be/held. Read the pet radish, shrunken now!”—Ruth Zuchter on twitt er

“The lyrics populating Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie’s new collection, the pet radish, shrunken, buzz with oblique wisdom and surgically sharp wit.[…] the sonnets, tercets and dialogue poems of this new collection strike powerful and deliberate chords even while they frolic and surprise. ” —Wanda Praamsma In Conversation: Wanda Praamsma talks with Pearl Pirie about her new collection

She’ll slip a hard edge into the most carefree poems to knock you out while other lines evoke giggles[…] a radiant union of contemporary situations and classic themes.”—Kalina Lafromboise on radish in Maissonneuve, Spring 2015 (print or subscription/behind a paywall: http://maisonneuve.org/issue/spring2015/)

“She’s the opposite of boring!” —9-year-old neighbour on the pet radish, shrunken

“Towards the end of the book, Pirie offers some of her poetics in “unpacking some boxes” with the line that has followed me like the friendliest raccoon in the neighbourhood, knocking over my garbage bins and looking at me full of righteous hunger: “this is the poem: the m & the me versus the ory & the sis.” The homophonic pun on verses, often attempted but rarely so well-served, gleams here. For this line alone, you should buy this book. For this line will ratchet up your spine in the best way possible. ” —Tanis MacDonald, The Rusty Toque

“‘community is not a commodity’. Pearl Pirie has invented a new genre of poetry when it looked like no such thing was possible. Some of the poems in this book read like pastiched out-takes from all the poems that have been edited and cut to make clean, polished gems. Pearl makes of the shaved off bits a better picture of the real state of the state of the state of mind (sic) that usually gets censored or flies over the radar .” —Czandra Mostly, FB A Poetry Month recommendation at 49th Shelf with books by Karen Solie, Jeff Latosik, Erin Moure and Amber Dawn. [Mar 28, 2015] One of the Most Anticipated CanLit: Spring 2015 by Kerry Clare, [Jan 26, 2015].”Quirky and fresh, playful yet serious, Pirie’s collection, the pet radish, shrunken, demands and activates new pathways of reason. These line-by-line lyrical segments both tantalize and take the reader down the rabbit hole (pulling rabbits out of hats along the way) with their semantic surprises and jumpy music. Pirie sees the world askew and brings the reader along for the ride. An invigorating collection.”— Catherine Graham on the pet radish, shrunken”Her verbal verve is rooted in an ecstatic attentiveness to language, both found and formal. Moving from sonnets to dialogue poems to tercets, these poems shelter surreal and uncanny imagery. Charged with innovative and lyrical energies, the pet radish, shrunken is a gorgeous rebellion.”— Eduardo C. Corral on the pet radish, shrunkenI read the book through three times[…] I very much enjoyed it. I laughed out loud on multiple occasions which is no small feat for a book of poetry! It was delightful. The poems collected in the pet radish, shrunken invite us equally into routine and catastrophic events. The delights of each new moment is tied with those memories that so casually insist on a place in a present. With humour, play, and brass, Pirie revels in the daily raucous of domesticity, verbatim conversations, and the language that must somehow hold a whole existence— Jenny Samparisi on the pet radish, shrunken

“Recommended reading: The Pet Radish, Shrunken by Pearl Pirie @pesbo (congratulations, Pearl) #poetry #CanLit — Debbie Strange (@Debbie_Strange) March 31, 2015“

The side project from the book is a generator of matryoshka words at twitter.