In acclaimed short-fiction writer Heather Birrell’s rollicking debut full-length poetry collection, Mr. T, Joni Mitchell, Fidel Castro, and the poet’s mother (among others) barge in to distract and derail the poet’s dreams. The poems in this book are playful, hallucinatory, and often funny. They explore the far-fetchedness and perseverance of love between friends and family members, the importance of libraries and locked mental health wards, and ways to live with meaning in the face of a looming apocalypse. Birrell’s poetry lines—weaving through an acrobatic breadth of forms and tones—are both precise and plainspoken, and showcase an odd, intuitive logic, embracing the surrealism of this world we’re stuck in.
A FEED DOG BOOK
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FLOAT AND SCURRY:
“Heather Birrell has an uncanny ability to read my mind, or perhaps — as Float and Scurry illustrates — I am not alone in seeing the beautiful in the mundane, or the purely ordinary in flights of fancy. The anxiety of modern life is hand in hand with humour and a battered but undaunted hopefulness, capturing the deliciousness of an inner life, either sleepwalking through dreams, or in the day-to-day pageant of our many masks. Knowing I had such a canny and capable tour guide, this book was a rabbit hole I was glad to dive into.”
— RONNIE BURKETT, Puppeteer and Officer of the Order Of Canada
“In Float and Scurry the ordinary world turns hallucinogenically marvellous and mad. Overheard spats, insomniac dreams, postpartum despair, eighties TV — Heather Birrell stirs her cauldron and ladles out some powerful bad medicine. Drink it down and prepare for bedazzlement.”
— SARAH HENSTRA, Governor General’s Award–Winning Author of The Red Word
Canadian writer Heather Birrell is the author of two acclaimed story collections, Mad Hope (one of the Globe and Mail’s top 23 fiction picks) and I know you are but what am I? (both from Coach House Books). Her work has been honoured with the Journey Prize for short fiction and the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction and has been shortlisted for both National and Western Magazine Awards (Canada). Her essays have recently appeared in The M Word and Canadian Notes & Queries and received notable mention in Best American Essays 2017. She recently returned to poetry with a chapbook titled Dreaming Fidel (Proper Tales Press). www.heatherbirrell.com
