Empties / Neil Surkan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Surkan, Neil, 1989- author.

Series:

Hugh MacLennan poetry series

The Hugh MacLennan poetry series

Standardized Title:

Empties (Compilation)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian poetry.

Genre:

poetry.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

viii, 92 pages ; 19 cm.

Place of Publication:

Montréal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2026]

Summary:

"In a powerful interplay of striking descriptions with tender intimations, Empties, Neil Surkan's third poetry collection, reckons with fatherhood in a depleted and collapsing environment: Is it possible to nurture new shoots while the fires close in? Feelings of emptiness, acts of emptying, and physical empties coalesce in these vivid and timely poems. Through a queer lens, Surkan's speaker scrutinizes masculinity and fatherhood as he confronts the necessary emptiness that comes with becoming someone's ancestor. Arrays of drained and discarded entities - empty bottles, broken pots and cups - summon a world, husked and untenably extracted, that teeters toward collapse, but even those empty spaces are receptacles for fleeting moments of vulnerability and tenderness. At its core, Empties explores the conditions of life on the verge of hopelessness. It finds, among shadows of doom and despair, unlikely but nonetheless inevitable reasons to hope. These are poems that teach endurance "in the face of all that won't / be saved" while still finding much in the world "to cherish / as it brinks." In direness, there is also awe: one mustn't forget, Surkan reminds us, that only empty bottles can sing."-- Provided by publisher.

Other Format:

Online version: Surkan, Neil, 1989- Empties.

ISBN:

9780228027317

0228027314

OCLC:

1527717537