![[Sharps]](http://gooselane.com/cdn/shop/files/1179_1024x1024.jpg?v=1730450845)
[Sharps]
88 pages
Published: October 7, 2014
Poetry / icehouse poetry
Paperback: 9780864922045 $19.95
Shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Emergencies, faith, truancy, and poverty intersect in this wry debut that volunteers a transfusion of the unpredictable for those who yearn to transition beyond a muralized Olive Garden world.
Published: October 7, 2014
Poetry / icehouse poetry
Paperback: 9780864922045 $19.95
Shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Emergencies, faith, truancy, and poverty intersect in this wry debut that volunteers a transfusion of the unpredictable for those who yearn to transition beyond a muralized Olive Garden world.
Stevie Howell's [Sharps] takes its cue from an Egyptian hieroglyph used interchangeably to represent "waters," the letter N, and all prepositions within a sentence. Similarly, [Sharps] alters its structure and functionality from page to page. The Queen launches an advertising campaign to procure our envy. The last unicorn crochets a sweater out of the sisal cords of the books. The falsity of Billy Joel's New York propaganda is grounds for libel. We discover the one thing you can do "With a sawed-off rifle, a low IQ, and curiosity/about human biology."
From certain angles, [Sharps] embraces the possibilities of poetry — from others, it engages in a protracted street fight with language.
From certain angles, [Sharps] embraces the possibilities of poetry — from others, it engages in a protracted street fight with language.
+Show more
Author
Stevie Howell's poetry and literary criticism has appeared in publications throughout Canada and abroad. She has released two chapbooks, Royal and Ringsend, and a pamphlet entitled Looting the Museum. In 2013 Howell's poem "Brief Review" won the 2013 Arc Poetry Journal Critic's Desk Award. She has also been a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. For her day job, she works as an editor for Spacing magazine. She lives in Victoria.
Awards
Shortlisted: Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Reviews
"Howell's stunning debut ... Her ear is impeccable." — National Post
"These poems are coded emergency and emergent code: hail, cut glass, cathedrals, systems, skeletons, and scorched earth. Stevie Howell has found a fault line underwriting Reality and turned this fissure, this terrible brokenness, into a lens. She sees the queasy, exact particular and can phase from its contours into metaphysics and back before we sense the ground shifting. An astonishing debut. An astonishing collection, full stop." — Ken Babstock
"These poems are coded emergency and emergent code: hail, cut glass, cathedrals, systems, skeletons, and scorched earth. Stevie Howell has found a fault line underwriting Reality and turned this fissure, this terrible brokenness, into a lens. She sees the queasy, exact particular and can phase from its contours into metaphysics and back before we sense the ground shifting. An astonishing debut. An astonishing collection, full stop." — Ken Babstock
