Permanent Carnival Time
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Permanent Carnival Time

In this bracing collection, Colin Smith's droll humour and meticulous control of language are metered out to explore the stakes of pain and the pain of folly.

Colin Smith

  • ISBN-13: 9781927886458
  • PRICE: $18.00
  • Paperback, 120 pages

“Flaunt your wealth, we/will forcibly reclaim it”

Language plays throughout the text, bringing a blithe tone to dark matters, and evoking fruitful tensions for the reader. Scattered topics of climate change, labour disputes, war, and massive inequities within cities are encountered by a voice that seems to scorn humanity as much as it delights in human language. Permanent Carnival Time is laugh-out-loud language poetry.

“100 years on from the Winnipeg General Strike, and where are we? Same super-rich greed and oppression tactics, same massive poverty, and pandemic illness. Permanent Carnival Time stirs us to see clearly the deluge of claptrap that passes for public discourse in neoliberal capitalism. A superb word-crafter with a sharp ear for rhythm, Smith makes us rage against callous injustices, while we laugh out loud with his urgent, compelling, heartfelt poetry. — Meredith Quartermain, author of Lullabies in the Real World

“If these snarling poems don’t topple your jolly-trolley, get out and strike-harder and higher! Between the lines of this searing bone-on-anvil Smithery-on-fire is a bottom-up demand for dire irreverent revolt. Saucy as Chaucer, ornery as Diogenes, nasty as Nietzsche, ballsy as Bataille, Permanent Carnival Time‘s punchline/breaks crackle-cackle with seismic humbling, rumble-crumble force. Seek shelter, grab tight to something solid, and read with your PPE on, this book is bound to explode in your hands! I triple-dog dare you, to open with care.” — Ted Landrum, maker of Midway Radicals & Archi-Poems

“Smith’s latest Rabelaisian screed accepts the high stakes of its moment and sets its author to work, painstakingly fact-checking Empire, peeling at the truth-y slough atop a rotting system. Herein the poet names names, spits statistics with sadistic wistfulness, and cackles as he kicks against the pricks. This is writing where anything goes, because everything matters; and like the killer mixtape that Smith’s sequencing slyly implies, reminds us that another word for ‘dissonant’ is ‘bittersweet:” — Cam Scott, author of ROMANS/SNOWMARE

Colin Smith

Colin Smith is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Multiple Poses (Tsunami Editions), 8 x 8 x 7 (KRUPSKAYA), and Multiple Bippies (CUE Books); as well as one chapbook Carbonated Bippies! (Nomados Literary Publishers). With Ted Landrum, Steven Ross Smith, and Jennifer Still, he is part of Eccentric Crops, a collaborative poem-making group. Their first chapbook is Table for Four ( JackPine Press). He has a BFA in creative writing from York University and is a past member of the Kootenay School of Writing. He lives in Treaty 1 Winnipeg, occupied Anishinaabe akiing, traditional Métis Homeland.

Reviews

Permanent Carnival Time is the best book of poetry I’ve read over the last few years. I mean it. It’s really excellent.

By Ryan Fitzpatrick

The Capilano Review, April 17, 2023

When TCR floated the idea that I write a review that would come out alongside their “Bad Feelings” issue, I told them I wasn’t writing reviews, ironically because of some bad feelings I was having. After some arm-twisting, I said I would only write a review of something that I cared about. I needed an antidote to all the bad feelings I was feeling about reviewing. So, I decided to review Winnipeg poet Colin Smith’s recent book Permanent Carnival Time, which is the best book of poetry I’ve read over the last few years. I mean it. It’s really excellent. But it’s also appropriate for TCR right now because Permanent Carnival Time, despite its fun time of a title, is obsessed with bad feelings. Bad feelings saturate this book, but we’ll get to that.  [Read the review.]

Smith’s lengthy poetic calls out culture and capitalism on their nonsense, deflection and outright lies

by rob mclennan

rob mclennan’s blog, August 30, 2021

From Winnipeg-based poet Colin Smith comes Permanent Carnival Time, furthering his exploration of civil discourse, neoliberal capitalism and chronic pain amid Kootenay School of Writing-infused poetics. Permanent Carnival Time engages with the prairies, including the historic Winnipeg General Strike, writing a wry engagement of language gymnastic and ruckus humour. “Labour is entitled to all it creates.” he writes, as part of the second poem, “Necessities for the Whole Hog.” Sparking asides, leaps and fact-checks, Smith’s lengthy poetic calls out culture and capitalism on their nonsense, deflection and outright lies, composing a lyric out of compost and into a caustic balm against capitalism’s ongoing damage. “Money with more civil rights than you.” he writes, as part of “Folly Suite”: “Luckless bustard.” [Read the review.]

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