To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Born to be an outsider because of a rare genetic disorder, Kallmann syndrome, Brian Brett lived an androgynous childhood of abuse and sexual harassment. In his teen years he slid into the waterfall of poetry, becoming an auto-didactic polymath, writing—as he says—“sideways” to the academic poetry of his times. Though raised into manhood in the back of a bootlegger’s truck, Brett, as the hometown outsider, took on the outside world, delving into ancient alchemical mysteries, the poètes maudit of Jean-Arthur Rimbaud’s days, the rhythms of various tribal cultures, the talking blues, the rhapsodic illuminations of jazz, all the while gathering field notes from nights around camp fires. To Your Scattered Bodies Go is a collection of poems written over the past twenty years, a collection that speaks with a child’s open directness, in fierce ironies, a sometimes bent logic, a justifiable fear of his body, of loves won and lost, and the hallelujahs of a man standing on the lip of the grave. Brett has a unique spirit, a unique musical voice.

Brian Brett is a poet, fictionist, memoirist, journalist, with fourteen books that include The Colour of Bones In a Stream, Coyote: A Mystery, and the Globe and Mail book-of-the year, Uproar’s Your Only Music. His best-selling Trauma Farm won numerous prizes, including the Writers’ Trust Award for best Canadian non-fiction. He is also the recipient of the Lieutenant-General’s Award and the Matt Cohen Lifetime Achievement award. To Your Scattered Bodies Go won the CBC Poetry Prize.