Realia
by Michael Trussler
Paperback (Poetry)
5.5" x 8.5”
108 pages
Release Date: April 2024
ISBN: 9781998926039
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In Realia, Michael Trussler grapples with the black fire of mental illness, revels in the joy inherent to colours, and probes what it means to be alive at the beginning of the Anthropocene. These are poems requiring Jonah and Little Red Riding Hood to change places if we are to measure diagnostically homeless oceans, surveillance capitalism, and the vulnerable human body. Including a mini-essay on the author’s OCD and another on how a Caspar David Friedrich painting is an uncanny neighbour to ourselves, Realia is fluent in mitochondrial psychology and the diaries of Katherine Mansfield. It also offers lessons in extinct Barbie Doll arrangement.
“Ping-ponging back and forth between interpretive prose and a poetic voice that is helpful, informative and shaken, Michael Trussler takes in the rubble of now. His book is a Lyrical Ballads manifesto for the anti-sublime (machines that learn, Gaboxadol hallucinations). Every thing is not a thing but “vibrant matter” and not particularly kind but more or less loyal to “juddering” humans, or so we like to think. The frightening are everywhere. And then the reader comes upon the extraordinary poetic essay for Katherine Mansfield. Realia is fierce and tender.”
“Michael Trussler’s Realia is a hefty thing, offering a curious lyric that approaches perception head-on, flickering between seeing and comprehending. When and how does observation sink in? At what point does the very act of witness alter what is being seen?”
Michael Trussler
Michael Trussler lives in Regina, Saskatchewan. He writes poetry and creative non-fiction. His work has appeared in Canadian and American journals and has been included in domestic and international anthologies. A photographer, he has a keen interest in the visual arts and is neurodivergent. He teaches English at the University of Regina.
