Neighbour Procedure

(Paperback)

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Description

Rachel Zolfs powerful follow-up to the Trillium Award-winning Human Resources is a virtuoso polyvocal correspondence with the daily news, ancient scripture and contemporary theory that puts the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine firmly in the crosshairs. Plucked from a minefield of competing knowledges, media and public texts, Neighbour Procedure sees Zolf assemble an arsenal of poetic procedures and words borrowed from a cast of unlikely neighbours, including Mark Twain, Dadaist Marcel Janco, blogger-poet Ron Silliman and two women at the gym. The result is a dynamic constellation where humour and horror sit poised at the threshold of ethics and politics.

Reviews

'Neighbour Procedure ... pack[s] an intellectual punch that reminds us, once again, of the powerhouse generations of innovative feminist poets that continually challenge and transform our understanding of what poetic texts can do.' -- Matrix Magazine 'Rachel Zolf brings an incredible range of readings to bear on the poetic line. If there is a mixing of media within these lines, there is also a proliferation of tongues, an effort to let language collide to produce a more acute and anguished experience of war ... This is a courageous and moving work that feels like the struggle of a lifetime condensed into potent lines.' -- Judith Butler, critical theorist and author of Gender Trouble 'Politics and poetry are a volatile mix. Yes, except that the voices of war and terrorism are themselves defiantly both. Zolf shows us this truth, and so her lyrics s(t)ing, acidly.' -- George Elliott Clarke, author of George and Rue 'This book is a sharp, painful cry against the tyranny of the monologic.' -- Charles Bernstein, author of Girly Man and Attack of the Difficult Poems 'Neighbour Procedure is the most realized conceptual-modular book of political poetry I've read to date; Zolf's language-motion escapes several nation-states' culture capture zones while re-threading the very notion of "self"-representational purposivity.' -- Rodrigo Toscano, author of Collapsible Poetics Theatre

Author Bio

Rachel Zolf is a poet and editor from Toronto who is presently living in New York. Her third full-length collection Human Resources won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Award. Previous collections include Shoot & Weep (Nomados), from Human Resources (Belladonna books), Masque (The Mercury Press) and Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks).