Patternicity

Patternicity contains a suite of poems that won a 2008 CBC Literary Award and follows the author's debut book of poems, The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions, 2008). As a physiologist currently completing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, Johnstone's work is informed by a scientific approach, his own corporeal environment and an exploration of "the unreliability of language, regardless of how it's relayed."
Prize(s): Short-listed CBC Book Club's Bookie Award for Best Poetry Collection (2010) 
I love Patternicity for its dirty noises. These are stylized, energized, slightly alarming poems tilted by scientific perspectives and ridden with violence, "meat stink," blood and decay; poems that try to celebrate the "flanks / of hog, skinned heads lopped off / and honeyed." Jim Johnstone's forms are shapely, but feral. His music is beautifully rational, complex and charismatic.
―Carmine Starnino
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Patternicity transforms the mundane into the otherworldly ... it's a compelling system of thought.
―Mark Callanan, Quill & Quire
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Award-winning and full of thought, Jim Johnstone brings readers a fresh experience with Patternicity. Seeking to explore language and how it often fails to truly get the message across, Patternicity is a read that shouldn't be missed by any poetry lover.
―Small Press Bookwatch (Oregon)
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This tight collection gains interest from the broad base of its scientific reference and historical scope, not
to mention its linguistic density and reach.
―Gillian Harding-Russell, Prairie Fire Review of Books
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Nightwood Editions
ISBN: 9780889712454
Paperback / softback
5.5 in x 8.0 in - 80 pp
Publication Date: 20100315
BISAC Subject(s):: POE011000-POETRY / Canadian / General 
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