A Good Time Had by All

This book brims with the intrigues of singular characters and uncommon insights into the complexity of human nature: a fame-obsessed, cartwheeling Karaoke King almost blows his one shot at true love; a misanthrope loses his only friend, a garden gnome; a wannabe mistress wanders home from her lover's hotel room with her underwear in her pocket; a young girl recites an ode to Dirty Donnie,” the name she has given her constant companion, a cigarette.Accessible and open, jaunty and energetic, these poems, while remarkably original, pay homage to poetic tradition: dramatic monologues rub shoulders with aubades and odes, all threaded with incantatory rhyme. Startlingly beautiful bursts of language make for a true cabinet of poetic curiosities.

Meaghan Strimas is a staff member at Quill & Quire magazine and a teacher at the creative writing MFA program at the University of Guelph. She is the author of Junkman’s Daughter and the editor of The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.