Leaving Mile End

Leaving Mile End is Jon Paul Fiorentino’s seventh collection of poetry and tenth book—a collection of poems that documents the daily din and clatter of cafés, galleries, and dive bars that make up Mile End in Montreal, perhaps the most artistically vibrant neighbourhood in the world. But this is no ordinary tour—we take a sharp turn and go online as Fiorentino mines the peculiar linguistic resources of a new world of doxxing, swatting, snarking, trolling, catfishing, and shaming. While addressing the disconnect between the way we treat each other online and the way we treat each other IRL, Leaving Mile End provides a new framework for understanding what it means to be home in 2017.

Leaving Mile End with its faint structural echo of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and its sprinkling of Morrissey references, strikes a melancholy note appropriate to a meditation on the passing of the ways of youth. “The Unfriending” nails how social media has chipped away at our civility and let the passive-aggressive hounds run wild. Best of all, “Second Person” strikes a righteous blow for every reader who has ever found herself irritated by the use of the “you” voice.
—MONTREAL GAZETTE

There is no mistaking Fiorentino’s sharp wit and precise vocabulary, which are entirely individual—something far too few writers can claim.
—QUILL AND QUIRE

[Fiorentino’s poetry] is the embodiment of an imagination so wild, a wit so sharp and a sense of humour so dark.
—MONTREAL GAZETTE

About Jon Paul Fiorentino

Jon Paul Fiorentino is the author ten books including I’m Not Scared of You or Anything, which was shortlisted for the ReLit Award for Short Fiction and Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, Needs Improvement, which was shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and Indexical Elegies, which won the CBC Books “Bookie” Award for Best Book of Poetry. He lives in Montreal where he teaches Creative Writing at Concordia University, is the editor-in-chief of Matrix magazine, and the editor for the Serotonin/Wayside Imprint of Insomniac Press.

Maryanna Hardy has worked as an artist, illustrator and screen printer and has published her work in publications nationally and internationally. She has designed countless gig posters and chapbooks of her drawings, built and ran a screen–printing shop in Montreal, and has painted public murals in Montreal and Toronto. She has most recently exhibited her work through Gallery Pangee and Gallery Youn in Montreal. In 2009 and 2010 she collaborated with the YPF Collective on their large-scale installation at the Osheaga International Music Festival in Montreal. In November 2010, she published a book of her drawings with Conundrum Press called So I’ve Been Told. The book was short-listed for Montreal Expozine’s 2010 Best Canadian Book and was also short-listed for a Doug Wright award for Best Avant-Garde Comic Book. She lives in Montreal.