“Zomparelli is that youth speaking back to senior (gay?) men on the Skytrain, in a poem that … opens this excellent, exuberant collection. From scoping the restaurants and denizens of the West End, to the bashers who trickle down to Davie Street, Zomparelli’s sharp glances at the changing circumstances of queer life are anything but languorous. … The speed of life on Davie mirrors the speed of the internet, where a missed connection is already a foregone conclusion. … The party, having us all run pell-mell up and down Davie, leaves Zomparelli, leaves us, with understated satisfaction, at the best of excited, hyper poetics travels, here on the Best Coast.”
– Canadian Literature

“Davie Street Translations pulls you in. Zomparelli’s language is muscular, touchingly specific and surprisingly melodic; his images hit you between the eyes. Disarmingly brutal and beautiful, we recognize this hyper urban life driven by our heightened basic instincts, regardless of who we are. This is a book of poetry you won’t put down. You won’t forget.”
— Betsy Warland

“… arresting and hard to put down … utterly charming and disarming.”
—Georgia Straight

“These poems pay respectful albeit cheeky homage to a host of queer writers and queer icons in Vancouver, in the process redefining the possibilities for what it might mean to write young, queer, pop culture–literate, smart and alive on these crowded rain-sodden streets. Here glosas, palindromes, alphabet, palimpsest, concrete graffiti poems, pop music anthems and erasure abut a ragged lyricism, hell bent on obliterating every last stereotype and polymer partition. “[T]here is no closet necessary/because bathroom stalls/suffice just the same//break them down, one/by one.”
— Nikki Reimer

“In the end, Davie Street Translations offers a fascinating glimpse into ‘gay male culture in Vancouver,’ but with its tip of the hat to raucous poetry of various historical periods, &, in its most formally interesting poems, a dash of wit & deeper intents, it reaches for something more, & sometimes finds it.”
— Eclectic Ruckus

“a challenging book of juxtapositions where nothing is sugar-coated … an ambitious, moving collection with a sharp voice that dares to take on stereotypes and expectations”
– Prick of the Spindle

“Zomparelli’s knowledge of place and community is profound, while his dedication to his own poetic vision is unwavering.”
— Rachel Rose