A poetic mashup of tweenage hollywood and heteronormative economics, 21st Century Monsters imagines a number of world-ending scenarios, from the collapse of the environment to the collapse of capitalism to the collapse of culture. Presenting a stock-ticker tableau of immanent disaster, these poems witness our own wide-eyed shock turned into reactionary fantasy while at the same time they plumb the sites of our fear, looking to form a primer on the things that terrify us, only to wonder what it is we’re so afraid of.
Cover text is typeset in Century Bold Condensed and letterpress printed on handmade Moricki Kozo paper. Inner text is typeset in EuphemiaUCAS, with titles in Carleton, and laserjet printed on Neenah Classic Columns paper using archival quality inks.
The reclaimed wood for this book was individually cut, sanded, and treated with natural tung oil in the spring sun. Bound with metric stainless steel nut / bolt and washer sets.
8″ x 5 3/4″. Limited to 45 copies and 3 artist’s proofs.
Shortlisted for the 2013 bpNichol Chapbook Award.
Currently available for purchase at Appollinaire’s Bookshoppe.
“Fitzpatrick clocks the monster face of levity with fistfuls of pointy couplets. He ponies up voices of caustic warmth in spaces of sad excess – where false economies choke on rainbow sentiment. Tagging prophets of vapidity with heart, home and suspect weather like a scarecrow surveys his landscape, 21st Century Monsters brings hopeless tension and helpful smiles to unlikely moments – sharply suggesting we never catch enough breath to reflect or reject our culture, or even our inner vampire.”
~ Chris Ewart, author of Miss Lamp
Recently moved to Vancouver, ryan fitzpatrick is a former editor of filling Station magazine and is one of the organizers of Calgary’s Choose Yer Own Festival. His full-length collection, Fake Math, was published by Snare Books in 2007. Recent work has appeared in The Capilano Review, Poetry is Dead, and the Enpipe Line Anthology.
Trisia Eddy 