The Polymers
DIGITAL VERSION ALSO AVAILABLE
Publication Date April 13, 2013
The Polymers is a bold new work from one of our most ambitious poetic minds. Structured as an imaginary science project, the varied pieces in this collection investigate the intersection of poetry and chemicals, specifically plastics, attempting to understand their essential role in culture. Through various procedures, constraints, and formal mutations, the poems express the repeating structures fundamental to plastic molecules as they appear in cultural and linguistic behaviours such as arguments, anxieties, and trends.
A wildly experimental and chemically reactive work, The Polymers thrills and provokes. You’ll never look at the world of a poem — or the world itself — in the same way again.
Short-listed for the Governor General's Literary Awards 2013
Contributors
Adam Dickinson
Reviews
"A wildly experimental and chemically reactive work, The Polymers thrills and provokes. You’ll never look at the world of a poem — or the world itself — in the same way again." Open Book Toronto
"Between being amused at the interjections Dickinson makes into usually scientific conventions, forms and language, and being enthralled by the occasional breath-taking metaphorical leap that extends far deeper than the surface level lightness, I couldn’t put this book down once I’d opened it." Lemon Hound
"This is smart poetry, evasive poetry, deeply specific poetry and it is worth the challenge." Winnipeg Review
"...a must-read for chemists interested in the plastic limits of culture; for poets interested in the cultural limits of plastics; for environmentalists keen on linguistics; for lovers of the weirdly incongruous; and for all of us denizens of the not so distant future..." Gulf Coast
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