Get Me Out of Here

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Why is it so difficult to stay present in the moment? Murakami’s poems, written in response to her open call on the Internet, search airport departures and arrivals for a handhold on the fleeting present. Working within and wriggling out of the constraint of 14 lines, the poems explore how to stay when the mind is begging to leave.

Get Me Out of Here furthers Murakami’s investigations into collaboration that began with Project Rebuild, the companion website to her 2011 poetry collection Rebuild, and that continued with her online projects, HENKŌ: A Powell Street Manyway Renga and WHITBOAM. Working with the idea that poems arise out of conversation and are built by communities, Murakami continues to invite the public into her poems – to rebuild them, to help write them, and in the case of Get Me Out of Here, to provide the inspiration that is supposed to come to a poet without effort. Murakami also invited observers into the editorial process.

A companion website works with the theme of exchanging experience and inspiration.

AUTHOR

Sachiko Murakami

Sachiko Murakami is the author of four poetry collections, including The Invisibility Exhibit (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award) and her latest, Render. As a literary worker, she has edited poetry, worked for trade organizations, hosted reading series, organized conferences, sat on juries, and judged prizes. She lives in Toronto.

Reviews

“Get Me Out of Here focuses on the airport as network hub, but it also examines the poetic process as a possible mode for communal conversation. Murakami is an explorative poet, an experimenter, who finds modern communication methods poetic in their nature. … Murakami’s mastery at the turn of phrase transcends the tangential, creating a collective expanse of poem branches that stem out from shared inspiration. … This collection is a thought-provoking metaphor for the continual flow that exists in both physical and digital communications. … In Get Me Out Of Here, Murakami fearlessly dives into the potentiality in the excesses of sharing and produces a masterwork that showcases her mercurial talents as an innovator in poetry.”
– Rusty Toque

“In Get Me Out Of Here, Murakami fearlessly dives into the potentiality in the excesses of sharing and produces a masterwork that showcases her mercurial talents as an innovator in poetry.”
– Rusty Toque