Throaty Wipes

By Susan Holbrook

In 1934, Gertrude Stein asked 'What is poetry and if you know what poetry is what is prose.' Throaty Wipes answers this question and many more! How does broadband work? Does 'chuffed' mean pleased or displeased? What if the generations of Adam had mothers? Through her signature fusion of formal innovation and lyricism, Holbrook delivers what we've been waiting for.

'Here is language that has a joyous physicality, reminding usthat language and, therefore, poetry is first and foremost a physical act involving the muscles of the lips, tongue and jaw; here is language that, for all its playfulness and humour, is honed against the hard edges of a post-postmodern, globalized world. Formally adventurous, Throaty Wipes refracts a mash-up of consumer society replete with Disney Princesses; Barbie dolls; Biblical myth; romantically adapted fishing instructions; the hard, hard work of birthing; surgery; thebody in all its vulnerabilities; medical procedures; running; and PIN numbers for starters. Holding it all together is an overarching intelligence shot through with a lambent compassion for the ultimately fragile human condition. Throaty Wipes shows us how poetry is always about risk-taking inside and outside of language.' – M. NourbeSe Philip

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Apr 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781770564466

Susan Holbrook

Susan Holbrook’s poetry books are the Trillium-nominated Joy Is So Exhausting (Coach House, 2009), Good Egg Bad Seed (Nomados, 2004) and misled (Red Deer, 1999), which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award. She lives in Leamington, Ontario, and teaches North American literatures and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. She is the author of a poetrytextbook, Reading (and Writing About) Poetry (Broadview Press, 2015) and co-editor, with Thomas Dilworth, of The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation (Oxford, 2010).

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