Children of the Outer Dark: The Poetry of Christopher Dewdney - Paperback

by Christopher Dewdney (Author), Karl E. Jirgens (Editor)

A four-time Governor General's-award nominee for both poetry and non-fiction, Christopher Dewdney is celebrated internationally as a writer and a visionary and is best known for his particular imagining of place and memory. Beginning with Paleozoic fossil formations in southwestern Ontario and moving through eons of natural history to cityscapes and the digital present, Dewdney's poetics encapsulate often surreal experiences from radical and epiphenomenal perspectives. His writing vibrates in a standing wave between science and art, reason and myth--embedding geology, neurophysiology, linguistics, and post-digital technology within a play of transitory viewpoints. Children of the Outer Dark provides a geological survey of Dewdney's poetic strata. The poems selected, along with their order of presentation, serve a critical function to mine diverse layers of development in Dewdney's career. This collection will reward all those who seek inspiration and will provide teachers, students, and other writers with a short natural history of one of Canadas essential poetic minds.

Author Biography

Christopher Dewdney has served as writer-in-residence at Trent, Western, and York universities. Featured in Ron Mann's film Poetry in Motion with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Ondaatje, and Tom Waits, Dewdney has presented his groundbreaking poetics across North America and Europe. He also creates acoustic and visual art, along with incisive arts commentary for print.
Karl E. Jirgens, head of the Department of English at the University of Windsor, has taught at the universities of Toronto, York, Guelph, and Laurentian. Since 1979, he has served as editor-in-chief of Rampike, a critically acclaimed international journal of art and writing. Jirgens's fiction, performance works, poetry, and scholarly articles are published worldwide.