A reminder that Surface Tension remains in print from Coach House Books – and is a book that invites response. It includes poems from letraset and photocopy manipulation and degeneration – and each page asks the reader to imagine a few form of poetry, a liquid and flowing poetry. In Surface Tension, letters and words gather and pool into puddles of poetry; street signs and logos reflected in the oily sheen of polluted gutters of rainwater. Like a funhouse mirror reflecting the language that surrounds us, the pages drip over the margins, suggesting that Madge was right, we are “soaking in it!”
Here’s some of the responses to Surface Tension from across the internet – I invite you to read and respond to the book ,,, and send me your thoughts, i’ll share them here and build on this conversation!
- B&W promotional postcard, issued by Coach House Books
- a series of 4 colour promotional postcards, issued by Coach House Books
- Digital artist “Elephant Zebra” created a eye-popping response to an excerpt from Surface Tension‘s “Page Break”
- 49th Shelf listed Surface Tension on their “Most Anticipated: Our 2022 Fall Poetry Preview“
- CBC listed Surface Tension as one of the “27 Canadian books we can’t wait to read in September” and “48 Canadian poetry collections to watch for in fall 2022“
- rob mclennan reviews Surface Tension on his blog
- Michael Greenstein reviews Surface Tension for The Miramichi Reader
- Greg Thomas reviews Surface Tension for Spam Plaza
- Rupert Loydell reviews Surface Tension for Tears in the Fence
- Andrew Brenza reviews Surface Tension for heavyfeatherreview.org
- Philip Terry reviews Surface Tension in Gorse
- Gordon Phinn reviews Surface Tension in WordCityLit
- Steven Ross Smith reviews Surface Tension in Freefall
- Sarah Burgoyne reviews Surface Tension in Arc
- Astra Papachristodoulou reviews Surface Tension in Periodicities
- Sarah Burgoyne interviews me about Surface Tension in Periodicities
- Carousel Magazine lists Surface Tension in its “Carousel Recommends: More books from 2022 to check out!“
- Christian Bok named Surface Tension one of his favourite books of 2022
- Astra Papachristidoulou named Surface Tension one of her “Books of the Year” the Poetry Society’s Poetry News
- rob mclennan named Surface Tension in his “‘Best of’ List of 2022 Canadian Poetry Books”
- Kevin Stebner included Surface Tension in his “Favourite Books I read this Year” YouTube video (Surface Tension mentioned at 7:42)
- Kyle Flemmer includes Surface Tension in his “favourite reads of 2022“
- I discuss Surface Tension with Matthew James Weigel as part of the Coach House Books podcast
- The CLMP (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses) includes Surface Tension in its Poetry of 2022 Round-up
- Watch as Calgary’s Shelf Life Books hosts the launch of Surface Tension & the post-reading Q&A
- Carve or Melt meets Scratch and Tint, a chapbook of visual responses to Surface Tension by Jeff Crouch was published by Paper View Books.
- Gary Barwin’s video response to “A Poem Should not mean” (an excerpt from Surface Tension) [Facebook]

