Regeneration Machine

Twenty years ago Nevin Sample walked into a small bank in Deep Cove, robbed a teller at gunpoint and fled into the forest of Cates Park. After a lengthy pursuit, he hid behind a stump at the edge of a small clearing. The police called to him. He raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.Nevin had a magnetism, an understated complexity: there were those who loved him, resented him, found him gregarious. To Joe Denham, he was an old, close friend. Regeneration Machine is a 100-stanza, 9,000-word letter-in-verse to Nevin’s ghost–a requiem, elegy, lament; a sort of flailing attempt to make sense of the nonsensically violent way that a non-violent, caring, intelligent young man chose to end his life.

AUTHOR

Joe Denham

Joe Denham is the author of four collections of poetry, including Regeneration Machine (Nightwood Editions, 2015), which won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Denham is also the author of a novel, The Year of Broken Glass. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets (Persea Books, 2005) as well as Spindrift (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017). He lives with his wife and two children in Halfmoon Bay, BC.

Reviews

“Regeneration Machine is what I long for in poetry: sustained, careful aesthetic consideration, human emotion, and specificity of experience.” ~ Micheline Maylor, Quill & Quire (starred review) “This is a fierce, haunting book.” ~ The Toronto Star”Regeneration Machine is a sane and sober love letter that after twenty years finally says goodbye to a friend. It’s burning Nevin Sample’s fishing boat and setting it out to sea.”PRISM International