Yams do not exist

Farinata Feck, a poet of mixed heritage, is a man of many appetites; yet he is most consumed by the search to find his romantic ideal. Yo-yoing between Regina and Winnipeg, Farinata crosses paths with colonial ghosts, cosplay enthusiasts, a Faulknerian gossip, a rogue tree-cop, and a sweet potato activist. With equal parts playfulness and decadence, Garry Thomas Morse renders the Beckettish adventures of the lovelorn libertine with hypnotic surrealism. A dizzying display of literary opulence and allusion, Yams Do Not Exist finds footholds in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, footnoting a twisting, prairie roadmap to romance, by turns hellish and sublime.

AUTHOR

Garry Thomas Morse

GARRY THOMAS MORSE has published several collections of poetry, notably Discovery Passages, about the history of his Kwakwaka’wakw Indigenous ancestors, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award, and Prairie Harbour, also shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award. His novels have gained critical attention for pushing the aesthetic envelope. He is the author of a speculative fiction series called The Chaos! Quincunx, and two of its three books have been nominated for the ReLit Award.

Morse is the recipient of the 2008 City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist. He has also served as the 2018 Jack McClelland Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto, and the 2019 Carol Shields Writer-in-Residence at the University of Winnipeg.

Reviews

In the spirit of Beckett, Kafka, and Margaret Laurence, these stories reinvent narrative to combine the tall tales of the prairie with the post-prairie mindscape of the 21st century. As Farinata Feck undertakes a romantic quest that flings him from one parodic adventure to another, the point of Morse’s satire is wickedly sharp, yet always sweetly tempered by his generous acceptance of our human failings … and his kick-ass sense of humour.–Catherine Hunter

Related in dazzling prose, Farinata’s picaresque adventures transpose whole worlds of art, poetry, and music onto the dreamscapes of the prairies. Morse’s pyro-technique produces a marvel of witty discord.–Méira Cook