The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them is a vibrant and diverse collection from a who’s who of the west coast poetry scene edited by Wayde Compton and Renée Sarojini Saklikar, published by Anvil Press. The poems assembled here range from the lyric to the experimental and address the theme of disconnection in an urban environment from a variety of positions, concerns, and cultural perspectives.The collection also includes brief reflections on the poems, written by the poets themselves, providing readers with an intimate insight into the inspiration and meaning behind the poems.
The Revolving City anthology evolved out of the
Lunch Poems reading series, a stimulating exchange of poetic ideas and cadence held the third Wednesday of every month in public space at Simon Fraser University’s Vancouver campus.
The Revolving City seeks to build community, extend poetry to new audiences, and reflect the rich diversity of the poetry scene both local and distant.In the introduction to
The Revolving City, Wayde Compton says: “The original intention of the Lunch Poems series was to offer a midday and mid-week meditation on poetry in the heart of downtown. So the series has always been thoughtfully disruptive, like poetry itself, erupting out of the quotidian and delivering something deliberate and defamiliar in the centre of the proscribed space of work. Like the natural interruption of lunch, poetry too, we say, is a necessity. Make time for it. Carve out space for it. Put it at the centre and let the world accommodate its presence.””The poets in this collection take us both inward, into the private joys and hurts of the individual and the family, and outward into a world of conflict and connection, a nexus of locations: past, present, the future,” says Renee Sarojini Saklikar.Contributors include Daphne Marlatt, Colin Browne, Calvin Wharton, Jamie Reid, Rahat Kurd, Peter Culley, Ray Hsu, Donato Mancini, and more.Watch Ray Hsu reading an excerpt from “Narrator,” which appears in
The Revolving City:Â
Narrator from Ray on Vimeo.
* * *Thank you to Anvil Press, especially Shazia, for sharing
The Revolving City with us, and to Ray Hsu for the exclusive video!
