Gary Barwin
These poems explore the image of the ampersand in dialogue with a variety of visual and calligraphic conventions including element from a variety of cultures. For me, the ampersand is a mysterious sign, both a letter (almost honorary member of the alphabet) but not. Instead, something else. A sign, an arabesque, its turning path indicating a joining, a connection, an orthographic energy that defies the alphabet, though it derives from the letter e and t, together the letter which form “et,” the word for “and” in Latin. The works are untitled.
The author of twenty-two books of poetry and fiction, Gary Barwin is the author of the nationally bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Random House) which won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His poetry includes For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019) and A Cemetery for Holes, a poetry collaboration with Tom Prime (Gordon Hill, 2019). His poetry, music and performances have been widely published, broadcast and performed internationally. It has appeared in such places as Granta, Poetry, The Walrus, and online in the Paris Review and Scientific American. A new novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy will appear from Penguin Random House Canada in 2021.
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Twitter: @garybarwin