Description
Poetry. The world's largest manufacturer of the two-stroke engine may seem like an unusual jumping-off point for poetry. But Peter Culley's second book about his hometown Nanaimo stems from his realization that there is not an hour of his waking existence when he cannot somewhere hear a leaf blower, a lawn mower or another piece of Briggs & Stratton-powered machinery. This book was written in a little over a year--a year which saw droughts in Tofino, floods on the Gulf Coast & Canadian boots on the ground in the never-ending "war on terror". Meanwhile, Hammertown--Culley's half-imagined version of the place where he lives--is being ripped apart by corporate boondoggles, accelerating development and the triumph of the service economy. In Culley's bitterly lyrical poems elements of this disappearing world appear as bad jokes, snatches of song and passages of reminiscence. Old records and half-remembered films are arrayed against impending collapse. Like small and noisy engines themselves, Culley's poems address the impossible contradictions of our unnamed era.
Author Bio
Peter Culley was born in Sudbury, Ontario in 1958 and grew up on RCAF bases in Holberg, British Columbia, Cold Lake, Alberta, Dana, Saskatchewan, Clinton, Ontario and for four years in Ayr, Scotland. He has lived in and around Nanaimo since 1972 and now lives in the former coal-mining town of South Wellington, beside the main line of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway. His books include HAMMERTOWN (2003), THE AGE OF BRIGGS & STRATTON (2008), and PARKWAY (2013), published by New Star Books, and To The Dogs (Arsenal Pulp Press).
Author City: NANAIMO, BC CAN