Gentle Fictions (Paperback)

An agent provocateur possessed of almost monstrous talent, Sherwin Tjia has been navigating the edges of Canadian poetry for some time, enthralling and agitating readers with his bizarre and beautiful chapbooks and concept-driven poetry. This book represents Tjia's exploration of both the essence and limits of poetry. Here, the traditional and innovative meet to form a riptide. These poems utilise a variety of forms and conceits toward expressing a world view that is tender and turbulent. Tjia's voice is intense, assured, preternaturally sophisticated. The poems, which charge through such structures as lists, found-text assemblies, lyrical verses and near-epics, are as ingenious as they are sterling instances of pure poetry. The arrival of the book marks an explosive entry into the Canadian literature atmosphere -- these poems are locked and loaded, certain to make a scorching, indelible mark.