A Hamburger in a Gallery

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A Hamburger in a Gallery

Stuart Ross’s eighth collection of poems delivers a gallery of emotionally charged poetry experiments along with a series of philosophical meditations on the aesthetically contrived and sometimes downright quirky poetic processes that were followed to generate the poems in this book. A Hamburger in a Gallery is deeply engaged in demonstrating how art happens, especially through a poet’s immediate aesthetic engagement with other works of art. Comprised of poems written ‘after’ the lines and language of other artists’ works, ‘during’ sessions of listening to other poets reading their poems, or constructed ‘from’ the parts and pieces of other artists’ words, A Hamburger in a Gallery provides a distinctive experience of the relationship between the finished poem and the process that informed its creation. Blurring the boundaries between creative writing and creative reading, Ross has once again created an utterly original, accessible, moving and avant-garde classic. ‘Now considered to be Canada’s foremost writer of the surreal, Ross is enjoying some much-deserved recognition and has taken his place as one of the cool uncles of Canadian poetry.’ George Murray, The Globe & Mail

AUTHOR

Stuart Ross

Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, and writing teacher living in Cobourg, Ontario. He is the acclaimed author of 20 books of poetry, fiction, and essays. His recent books include Our Days in Vaudeville (Mansfield Press, 2014), A Hamburger in a Gallery (DC Books, 2015), Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press, 2015), and A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (Wolsak and Wynn, 2016). He was shortlisted for the 2000 Trillium Book Award, won the 2010 ReLit Prize for Short Fiction for Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009), and his novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (ECW Press, 2011) was co-winner of the 2012 Mona Elaine Adilman Award.

Reviews

‘There’s no other poet like Ross in North America: one who drinks deep from the leaping, skittering invention of early surrealists like Benjamin Peret but delivers it with the croaky conviction of a Jewish Captain Beefheart.’ Brian Joseph Davis, Eye Weekly

‘Ross’ poetics shift from the surreal to the straightforward, from the concrete to the downright meditative and philosophical, as well as through a strange humour, self-aware and even ironic sadness, and sense of deep loss that permeate much of the collection. I stagger in my living room,’ he writes, to open the poem ‘IN A FOREST OF WHISPERS,’ ‘wedged between the piano keys / You could go cryogenic / outside your own borders [.]” — rob mclennan’s blog, June 2015