No TV for Woodpeckers
CBC Books | Posted: February 13, 2017 9:44 PM | Last Updated: August 30, 2018
Gary Barwin
In the pages of No TV for Woodpeckers, the lines between haunting and hilarious, wondrous and weird, beautiful and beastly, are blurred in the most satisfying ways. No stranger to poetic experimentation, Barwin employs a range of techniques from the lyrical to the conceptual in order to explore loss, mortality, family, the self and our relationship to the natural world.
Many of these poems reveal a submerged reality full of forgotten, unknown or invisible life forms. Within this reality, Barwin explores the connection between bodies, language, culture and the environment. He reveals how we construct both self and reality through these relationships and also considers the human in relation to the concepts of "nature" and "the animal."
As philosophical as it is entertaining, weaving together threads of surrealism, ecopoetics, Dada and more, No TV for Woodpeckers is a complex and multi-layered work that offers an unexpected range of pleasures. (From Buckrider Books)