Tuesday 17 August 2010

When it rains, it pours.

Andrew MacDonald has reviewed The Reinvention of the Human Hand in the latest issue of the Maple Tree Literary Supplement. Here's a sample:
Both a swan song to our shared primordial past and an examination of how the animal within thrives in spite of, or perhaps in retaliation to, our best efforts to subdue it, The Reinvention of the Human Hand might very well be the year’s most astute meditation on human nature and its lingering past
Read the whole review here.

Saturday 14 August 2010

Roxanna Bennet Hates Almost Everything... but thankfully not my poems!


Poet Roxanna Bennett (pictured is one of her illustrations), who was at my reading in Toronto this past Wednesday in support of Now Hear This, has written a combined review of my reading and of my new book. She's posted it to her blog called "Roxanna Bennett Hates Almost Everything," and while I often relate to that sentiment, I'm pleased to report that my poems appear to be one of the exceptions. Here is a sample:



The Reinvention of the Human Hand is a gorgeous sucker punch of a book. Vermeersch has that rare gift of using small, deceptively simple words to produce immense impact. He takes from popular culture people, icons, animals that have fascinated us, spectacles that conflict us, reminds us we are both audience and the wizard behind the curtain. Opening with a poem about the Lascaux cave painting, we are at once reminded of our origin, our place in the natural world that we conveniently try to forget. Again and again, Vermeersch pulls us back into our rightful place on the planet as mammals, part of the family of animals, not so different from those we seek to dominate and destroy. In the poem ‘Boys Who Envy Werewolves’, Vermeersch looks unflinchingly into the violent human heart, and as readers, we are unsettled by the honest reflection of ourselves upon the page. 


Many thanks to Roxanna Bennett. Read the whole review here.