Meniscus

In the middle of his life, Robert Lowell wrote “Memories of West Street and Lepke,” a poem that reflected on Lowell’s recurrent manias and included the lines “My manic statement.” This is Shane Neilson’s manic statement, arching backwards through his personal histories (rural, difficult) and then into the current scale of illness: how it prophecizes and destroys. But this is not a book solely given over to a state; Neilson gives most of the book over to love, how it moves him, the disaster of chasing it, and how it settles all the accounts in his life.

AUTHOR

Shane Neilson

Shane Neilson is a poet, physician, literary critic, and scholar of Canadian literatures who lives with disability. He published his first review in 1998 and has had to look over his shoulder ever since. In 2012, his critical prose won Arc Poetry Magazine?s ?Critic?s Desk? award as selected by Amanda Jernigan. In 2018, his scholarly work on Canadian literature that is rooted in disability studies was awarded SSHRC?s $50,000 ?Talent? Award. In 2019, his article on the representations of pain in Canadian literature was shortlisted for Canadian Literature?s 60thAnniversary Graduate Student Essay Prize. Shane?s own poetry has received several accolades, including the Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry in 2018; The Walrus Poetry Prize in 2017, selected by Margaret Atwood; and in 2011, he was shortlisted for the Trillium Poetry Prize. Shane is an assistant professor in family medicine at McMaster University (adjunct) and he continues to practice medicine at a little clinic in Guelph, Ontario.