Hypotheticals

(Paperback)

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Description

Science is a useful metaphor for understanding our lives, but it is often shown to be as fallible as the flawed humans who lean on it. This lively, thoughtful, and refreshingly speculative debut collection turns scientific method around to question science's faith in certainty, exploring the alternate meaning of "hypothetical" as something that is merely "supposed to be true." Under the poet's wide-angled, open-hearted gaze, scientific investigation begins to mirror the dark art of poetry, reinforcing what we believe about ourselves one minute, then abruptly throwing everything into question.

Leigh Kotsilidis lives in Montreal, Quebec, where she works as a freelance graphic designer while completing her MFA in studio arts.

Reviews

'[Hypotheticals] seems to represent the best--which is to say, the smartest--in a new kind of poetry, steeped in science, relentlessly questioning its foundation (examination of the spine is a recurrent trope) and hardly concerned about where that leaves poetic tradition. Hypotheticals proposes a new look at the world in a brave poetic voice.' -- American Scientist '[An] excellent debut collection ... By speaking of hypotheticals, instead of hypotheses [Kotsilidis] implies that she will do more than explain the facts: she will imagine them.' -- Montreal Review of Books 'Kotsidilis is not just tossing around polemics against science, or defining Man as the being that deceives himself in believing that he is not deceived. Her best poems wield images to reshape perception itself.' -- The Rover 'There's a beautiful recklessness in the combination Leigh Kotsilidis imagines, careful invitations in the sounds and shapeliness that let understanding not be reduced or distorted. These poems wrangle with the vocabularies of explanation, pronouncement, commerce, argument and fact, allowing them, more often than not, to self-destruct, so that we can glimpse in the rubble and wreckage and aftershocks something we are not always in a position to remember.' -- Dara Wier

Author Bio

Leigh Kotsilidis grew up in North Bay and Niagara Falls, Canada. In 2006 she graduated from York University in Anthropology and Creative Writing. Her poems have appeared in literary journals including The Fiddlehead, Prism International and Prairie Fire, and have been anthologized in I.V. Lounge Nights, This Grace and The Hoodoo You Do So Well. In 2009 she was selected as a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards. She currently lives in Montreal where she works as a freelance graphic designer while completing her MFA in Studio Arts.