Asking for Directions is a happy hour of poetry, blurring the lines between straight-up realism, goofy weirdness, linear narrative, dreamscape, lovestruck awe, wonder, and joy.
Poetry for Firth is under every rock. Poetry is the handyman who should be tiling a kitchen backsplash but instead relives lost dreams of hockey glory. Poetry is a creepy and distracted high school geography teacher. Poetry is snowmobilers on a patio drinking beer next to a thawing, late-March lake. Poetry is impending heart surgery, birds, the dead, euchre parties, funerals, graffiti, Sunday morning hotel rooms, ashtrays, blue flowers, desiccated chipmunk carcasses, and, of course, sex, love, and laundry.
MATTHEW FIRTH lives in Ottawa. He doesn’t divide his time in any other city or town. He lives a life centred on love, lacrosse, beer, books, old-timers hockey, community, and family. He is the author of four short story collections, including Shag Carpet Action and Suburban Pornography (both published by Anvil Press). He is a regular contributor to subTerrain magazine, where he writes the ever-softening column Crank ’n File. Asking for Directions is his first full-length collection of poems.
