10:10

Finalist, Governor General’s Literary Awards (Poetry) Shortlisted, Nelson Ball Prize Escaping from the evils of the modern world into the vivid colours of a bird’s plumage, Michael Trussler’s 10:10 plunges into the mystery and horror of living at the beginning of the Anthropocene. How can there be both terrible violence and extraordinary beauty in the world? How can birdwatching coexist with genocide? How can nature be loved and destroyed all at once? Trussler’s poetic voice is delightfully fluid: moments and images from movies, aesthetic theory, and animal life collide in each poem, sometimes in a single line. From lyrics to prose, high art to emails, Trussler sifts through the shards of society to seek refuge in the beauty and strangeness of words, the beguiling richness of images, the intensity of the natural world.

About the Author :
Michael Trussler’s work engages with the beauty and violence of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from a neurodivergent, fluid perspective. His writing encompasses several genres and modes of expression, ranging from the lyrical to the avant-garde. Trussler teaches English at the University of Regina and is the author of seven books, including 10:10; The History Forest, winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry; the short fiction collection, Encounters, winner of the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award; and a memoir entitled The Sunday Book, which won the Saskatchewan Book Award in both the Non-Fiction and City of Regina categories. Deeply compelled by the natural world, Trussler hikes in the Canadian Rockies at every opportunity.

Review :
Like a wedding dress fashioned from a WWII parachute, Trussler’s poems billow and collapse time and context with hopeful invention. A postcard to the Anthropocene, a staring contest with the frozen clockfaces of a Kienholz exhibition, Trussler’s poems teach us the transformative power of lyric poetry to relieve us from linearity and welcome, with open hands, the ongoing presence of our complicated pasts. 10:10 arrives right on time. The pages in Michael Trussler’s 10:10 feel like sticks and steel being rubbed together, igniting flames. Marcus Aurelius writes, “You must now at last perceive of what kind of universe you are a part.” 10:10 is a reckoning with history, ethics, art, war, and political expressionism, to name just a few. And then there’s art: Vermeer with his “light half / way between tequila, frayed lemon, and sand.” One-minute Trussler is singing the praises of lyric poetry, the next he is sharing the reckoning of knowledge and dreams. What an unusual, mixed media; simply said, there is magnificence here. “I have said it before,” Rilke states, “I am learning to see.” 10:10 reminds us of all the wisdom that occurs beyond our awe and blundering.