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CBC BOOKS CANADIAN POETRY COLLECTIONS TO WATCH FOR IN FALL 2023
In his follow-up to SKY WRI TEI NGS, Nasser Hussain tackles the absurdity of the English language
"Think of 'time as a lantern,' suggests Nasser Hussain, in these inimitable poems that take play seriously and allow seriousness to enter the room disguised as incantation. These are poems that long to dismiss the lyric’s most recent pretty mask of polite propriety and instead take us to the lyric’s ancient roots. It started way back, the poet says, 'when a cave person made a grunt,' to speak the name of a thing. Indeed. This is the lyric’s ancient pact with the world: to spin playful language into seriousness of giving things their names—what are we without this speaking, this tune? Hussain knows this and writes beautiful poems—and I, for one, am grateful." – Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic
"Hussain's humour is never complacent; it is the opposite of a defence mechanism (we are encouraged to imagine such a thing) and wryly sidesteps the bad binary of conservative withdrawal as set against algorithm-envenomed hyperassertion. He puts into words a new masculinity maturer than we deserve, that acknowledges swerves of defiance to be inseparable from underswells of doubt." – Vidyan Ravinthiran, author of The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here
"Hussain’s poems both puzzle and illuminate, as he delivers answers in no-answers, clarity through absurdity. Can we break down the inanity of our modern lives with verve and levity? Yes, indeed. Love Language unveils the possibilities." – The Toronto Star
Nasser Hussain lives in the U.K. and teaches Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of several books of poetry, including SKY WRI TEI NGS (2018) and Love Language (2023).