Realia

In Realia, Michael Trussler grapples with the black fire of mental illness, revels in the joy inherent to colours, and probes what it means to be alive at the beginning of the Anthropocene. Perfectly clear, perfectly opaque, Trussler’s poetry implodes the lyric to channel the bright disintegration of our contemporary moment. These are poems requiring Jonah and Little Red Riding Hood to change places if we are to measure diagnostically homeless oceans, surveillance capitalism, and the vulnerable human body. Shambolic and precise, these poems are unskinned. Including a mini-essay on the author’s OCD and another on how a Caspar David Friedrich painting is an uncanny neighbour to ourselves, Realia is fluent in mitochondrial psychology and the diaries of Katherine Mansfield. It also offers lessons in extinct Barbie Doll arrangement.

AUTHOR

Michael Trussler

Michael Trussler writes poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. He is also a photographer. Hes published various books, most recently Rare Sighting of a Guillotine on the Savannah (Mansfield Press, 2021). His prize-winning work has appeared in domestic and international anthologies and journals. His collection of short stories, Encounters, won the Book of the Year and City of Regina Awards from the Saskatchewan Book Awards in 2006. Accidental Animals, a poetry collection, was shortlisted for the same awards in 2007. He teaches English at the University of Regina.

Reviews

“ltpgtPingponging back and forth between interpretive prose and a poetic voice that is helpful informative and shaken Michael Trussler takes in the rubble of now His book is a Lyrical Ballads manifesto for the antisublime machines that learn Gaboxadol hallucinations Every thing is not a thing but vibrant matter and not particularly kind but more or less loyal to juddering humans or so we like to think The frightening are everywhere And then the reader comes upon the extraordinary poetic essay for Katherine Mansfield Realia is fierce and tenderltbrgt Tim Lilburn author of ltigtNuminous Seditions Interiority and Climate Changeltigt”