As the sickly boy dreams in bed, the shadows beneath his parlour curtain are stirring, taking shapes inexpressible even in a child's dreams. "Real keeps us silent," argues the taxidermied rabbit to the young air-rifle that shot it dead. "Real keeps us still. You must never ask anyone if they are Real."

For exactly as long as history, a secret peace has bound the human and inanimate worlds. But the stories of the other world are pushing into our own, and that peace will be tested tonight...

In this collection of twenty-six poems and the unbelievably weird happenings that link them, Noah Wareness steals electricity from nihilistic horror fiction and shaggy late-night cartoons to create a landscape of profound loss, vertigo and wonder.

Noah Wareness lives with his friends in the city. He writes by hand.

Praise for Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us

"One of the strangest, most unique and more brilliant poetry debuts in Canadian history." —Winnipeg Free Press

"Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us reads like a Tim Burton-directed, uncanny valley version of a beloved children’s book...grim, gripping, and more than a little creepy. [It] is a trippy philosophical exploration [and] a delicious celebration of loss, vertigo, and wonder." —Lit Hub

"[Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us] is a punk nightmare, a sharp intake of the lungs, an often unsettling and always weird meditation on realness. ... Wareness eschews lilt, lyric, and love, rejects all conventions of poetic tone, and really just does whatever-the-salty-language he wants. A middle-fingered debut from a poet who scores his poems for the breath of snarling dogs and musings talking rabbits." —Contemporary Verse 2

"Noah Wareness is cavalier, candid and so damned sharp that there's a genuine fear of cutting yourself on his wit." —Today Poetry

"Unsettling and also warm-hearted, insidiously serious, and astutely fun."—Canadian Literature

"I am so damn thrilled to have helped this come about because I feel like I have been one of the few keepers of an explosive secret for the past decade ... Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us is not merely a brilliantly heterogeneous gathering of poems, but an ambitious concept album, a hybrid work of punk philosophy showcasing its author's eccentrically original mind and wacky humour ... Reading this book will make you see the world a little differently." —Zach Wells