10:10

Escaping from the evils of the modern world into the vivid colours of a bird’s plumage, Michael Trussler’s 10:10 plunges into the mystery and horror of living at the beginning of the Anthropocene. How can there be both terrible violence and extraordinary beauty in the world? How can birdwatching coexist with genocide? How can nature be loved and destroyed all at once?

Trussler’s poetic voice is delightfully fluid: moments and images from movies, aesthetic theory, and animal life collide in each poem, sometimes in a single line. From lyrics to prose, high art to emails, Trussler sifts through the shards of society to seek refuge in the beauty and strangeness of words, the beguiling richness of images, the intensity of the natural world.

AUTHOR

Michael Trussler

Michael Trussler writes poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. He is also a photographer. Hes published various books, most recently Rare Sighting of a Guillotine on the Savannah (Mansfield Press, 2021). His prize-winning work has appeared in domestic and international anthologies and journals. His collection of short stories, Encounters, won the Book of the Year and City of Regina Awards from the Saskatchewan Book Awards in 2006. Accidental Animals, a poetry collection, was shortlisted for the same awards in 2007. He teaches English at the University of Regina.

Reviews

Like a wedding dress fashioned from a WWII parachute Trusslers poems billow and collapse time and context with hopeful invention A postcard to the Anthropocene a staring contest with the frozen clockfaces of a Kienholz exhibition Trusslers poems teach us the transformative power of lyric poetry to relieve us from linearity and welcome with open hands the ongoing presence of our complicated pasts 1010 arrives right on time

The pages in Michael Trusslers 1010 feel like sticks and steel being rubbed together igniting flames Marcus Aurelius writes You must now at last perceive of what kind of universe you are a part 1010 is a reckoning with history ethics art war and political expressionism to name just a few And then theres art Vermeer with his light half way between tequila frayed lemon and sand Oneminute Trussler is singing the praises of lyric poetry the next he is sharing the reckoning of knowledge and dreams What an unusual mixed media simply said there is magnificence here I have said it before Rilke states I am learning to see 1010 reminds us of all the wisdom that occurs beyond our awe and blundering