Mathew Henderson's Roguelike, the much-anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed 2012 debut The Lease, melds the unique online vocabulary, culture and logic of video games with family and addiction narratives, specifically the poet's relationship with his mother and her struggle with narcotics. The resulting poems are arresting and fresh, mining game mythology, fantasy and family history, while exploring the rich connection between video gaming and notions of addiction, repetition, storytelling and escapism.

Though the poems are largely narrative, ultimately Roguelike is less about stories themselves than it is about the psychological and emotional forces that define how and why we make them — how we're all moved to shape the disparate and seemingly unconnected events of our lives into something meaningful, to make sense of the past and the present through storytelling. (From House of Anansi Press)

Mathew Henderson is a poet from Tracadie, Prince Edward Island. His first poetry collection, The Lease, was a finalist for the 2013 Trillium Book Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.