In Smog Mother, John Wall Barger asks: What is a poet without a home? Over and over he finds answers in the joy of duende, the goblin spirit that, as Lorca says, “will not approach at all if he does not see the possibility of death, if he is not convinced he will circle death’s house.” Ranging from an anti-government rally on the streets of Bangkok to a train trip on the Trans-Mongolian Railway, Smog Mother is the strongest collection yet from a poet writing at the height of his powers.

“A poem is an act of faith because the poet believes in it,” contends John Wall Barger in The Elephant of Silence, a collection of essays exploring forms of knowing (and not knowing) that awaken a poetic mind. By considering poetry, film, and the intersections among aesthetic moments and our lives, Barger illuminates the foundations of poetic craft but also probes how to be alive, creative, and open in the world. Each piece investigates unanswerable questions and indefinable words...

The Mean Game—John Wall Barger’s fourth book-length entry in what might be called, collectively, a savage comedy—bristles with allegories that explore human cruelty and suffering. Gathering narratives that feel both ancient and modern, Barger forges an apocalyptic vision without sacrificing poetry’s underlying sense of joy, humour and revelation. Part comic book translated from a dead language, and part nightmare dreamscape, The Mean Game is a must-read from one of Canada’s most kinetic wr...

A resurrection pie is defined as any dish made from yesterday’s leftovers—a meal that, in essence, rises from the dead. In this spirit, John Wall Barger’s new collection of poetry calls forth the past and its dead, describing a bardo-like psychic terrain in a language of fable and trauma. The poems move fast and strange: a man arrives at his ex-lover’s island of secrets; a mourner coughs up red flower petals; a man walks backward across Philadelphia as bodies rise out of the ground; a boy ...