Touch Anywhere to Begin

In Touch Anywhere To Begin, Jim Nason’s fifth collection of poetry, poems are set in a physical world where full-throttle desire commingles with love, loss and grief. Although death is ever present, death of a father, death of a friend, there is a life-affirming/mystical quality at the core of this book. Nason reminds us that the city is both real and surreal, a place of creatures and buildings, imagination and deep emotions. He celebrates demolition as enthusiastically as construction. The death of a child is no more or less significant than an elderly woman?s sickly body or a young man’s seductive powers. Finalist for the 2015 CBC poetry prize, the long poem, City With Animals, which celebrates one billion transformations in the body per second, is a tribute to Max Ernst.

AUTHOR

Jim Nason

Award-winning author Jim Nason has published five poetry collections as well as a short story collection. Spirit of a Hundred Thousand Dead Animals is his third novel. His stories, essays and poems have been published in journals and anthologies across Canada and the US, including Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2008, 2010 and 2014 and he has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Award in both fiction and poetry categories. Jim holds degrees from McGill, Ryerson and York Universities and is the owner/publisher of Tightrope Books, Toronto. He is the founder and organizer of Canada’s annual human rights poetry event, Meet Me in the Middle: Writers on Rights. Jim is a frequent participant on fiction and poetry panels, and Spirit of a Hundred Thousand Dead Animals was inspired at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival, where he was on a panel about sexuality in Canadian poetry.