‘After you’re done reading it you will feel like you’ve just watched a film. The images will come back to haunt and unhaunt you over and over. You’ll remember and then you’ll remember you just read a book, not a film. Robertson has written a majestic long-poem-film on paper that disrupts in real time our perception of the everyday — the subconscious thoughts, the thinking without thinking, the seeing without seeing — it’s all here, in intonating rhythm,making readers crack open the undercurrents of the seeming banality of normative life — and behold the wondrous thought-form journey to epiphany that Robertson takes us on.’

‘Lisa Robertson’s Cinema of the Present is at the top of my reading list. With writing passed through this prism of celluloid, poetry stays in the 21st century.’

‘This book—which will feature four different back covers designed by artists Hadley+Maxwell, emphasizing its status as an objet d’art—defies review, instead demanding engagement, conversation, and multiple rereads … those who simply relish getting lost in a sea of thought will discover almost infinite depths.’

‘[Cinema of the Present] incisively indentifies the pulse of the contemporary milieu and employs strategies to think about how and why literary artifice can assess and intervene into the contemporary moment.’