Touch Anywhere to Begin

In Touch Anywhere To Begin, Jim Nason?s fifth collection of poetry, poems are set in a physical world where full-throttle desire commingles with love, loss and grief. Although death is ever present ? death of a father, death of a friend ? there is a life-affirming/mystical quality at the core of this book. Nason reminds us that the city is both real and surreal, a place of creatures and buildings, imagination and deep emotions. He celebrates demolition as enthusiastically as construction. The death of a child is no more or less significant than an elderly woman?s sickly body or a young man?s seductive powers. Finalist for the 2015 CBC poetry prize, the long poem ?City With Animals,? which celebrates one billion transformations in the body per second, is a tribute to Max Ernst.

Jim Nason is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Music Garden (2013) and Narcissus Unfolding (2011) with Frontenac House Books. He is also the author of two novels, I Thought I Would Be Happy (2013, Tightrope Books), The Housekeeping Journals (2007, Turnstone Press), and a collection of short stories, The Girl on the Escalator (2011, Tightrope Books). Jim has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Prize in both poetry and fiction, and has been published in the The Best Canadian Poetry 2008 and 2010. He lives in Toronto.