A writer, musician and environmental activist, he lives steps away from Ottawa City Hall and Parliament Hill, and often writes about the nefarious deeds of his neighbours. He was shortlisted for the 2008 Arc Poem of the Year Award. His poetry has recently appeared in Rogue Stimulus.
Below is a reprint from the chapbook The Delicate Art of Paper Passing – a poem about auto-centric urban planning, smog and concrete. The chapbook is available from the Bywords store.
Une Poésie Concrète
four wooden pegs, a length of string
and freshly poured concrete
a rectangular prison removed from
the world, but still in its embrace.
poetry emerges as the iambic
pounding of construction crews
slipping across a desolate landscape,
surveying the wreckage of the
suburban dream. from concrete boxes
to apartment blocks, a cold metallic
sheen. cars as corpuscles, creeping
through the smog and tangled arteries.
Mike Buckthought ran The Muses reading series — being resurrected soon — watch for news.