I am coming to the Kingston WritersFest on September 19

I am coming to the Kingston WritersFest this Friday, September 19, for two events! 

At noon, I'll be doing my "How to Read a Poem" workshop, and at 1:30 I'll be sharing the stage with Callista Markotich and Terese Mason Pierre for a poetry panel called "Projections and Reflections" with host Jason Heroux.

I hope to see you then! 

Gert more information here.

Chris Banks reviews NMLCT

Chris Banks is a poet who always keeps me on my toes. I value his close reading, so this review of NMLCT will be one that I treasure for a long time.

"Honestly, I have not really read a poetry collection like this one. It’s a highly original book.... These spellbinding poems, at once allusive and engaging, are portents, wards against the artificial intelligence and misinformation we find so much of our modern lives are now mired in, but they are also, I think, signposts, maps for finding our way back out, through words, to our genuine selves...

"There is rigour and tension in these 16 line, formally-constrained poems, but also a sharp, restless and original consciousness that is the nucleus of this whole poetry collection. NMLCT encourages us to make new thoughts, new connections, new poems amidst the old abandoned computer code and made-to-sell cheap design work, amidst “the glitches” of background machine noise."

Check out The Woodlot and read the entire review here.

Selena Mercuri reviews NMLCT

Every writer looks forward to those reviews when the critic really understands what the book is trying to do. Selena Mercuri has done just that in her review of NMLCT in The Seaboard Review of Books. I am grateful. What a wonderful way to start the day!

"In NMLCT, Vermeersch creates a multimedia experience that mirrors the hybrid nature of contemporary digital life. The reader must navigate text, image, and code much as we navigate our daily digital environments. The poems argue for the irreplaceable value of human consciousness, intuition, and embodied experience in an age increasingly dominated by algorithmic thinking. NMLCT reminds us that the animal city, however threatened, remains our true home."

— Selena Mercuri,

The Seaboard Review of Books

Read the whole review here.

Rob McLennan reviews NMLCT

The first review of NMLCT is here, just days away from its official release. With thanks to Rob McLennan.

"Throughout the collection, Vermeersch builds his bricks of lyric narrative in lengthy and even gymnastic lines, more oriented in propulsive, almost staccato, sound than in his prior work.... The tension is palpable, shifting between an optimism for humanity or sense of doom, interspersed throughout."

Click here to read the whole review.

I'VE BEEN MEANING TO ASK YOU (INTERVIEWS)

With the official publication date of my new book just two weeks away, I am grateful to Kathryn Mockler for interviewing me for her I'VE BEEN MEANING TO ASK YOU series. I talk about memory, ghosts, and The Goonies, among other things.

Read on!

Exploring the motif of "Real Ladders"

On January 26, 2025, I completed a painting called "Real Ladders" and since then I have been exploring the visual language of the ladder motif I first used in that painting. I don't where this exploration will lead, but I am excited by the 21 paintings I've completed so far in this series. More to come!

To see more, visit my visual art page.

NMLCT: BOOK LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT

SAVE THE DATE!

I'd love it if you could join me to celebrate the launch of

Wed, Sept 24, 2025

from 7 to 10pm

at The Piston

937 Bloor Street West,

[festivities included]

Sincerely, Paul Vermeersch

Click here to see other upcoming events. 

NMLCT: Full cover reveal!

And here it is, the full cover, ready to rock! I love the hot-pink accent colour on the back!

Big thanks to Tolu Oloruntoba, Annick MacAskill, and Stuart Ross for the votes of confidence, and to David Altmejd for the sculpture.

Again, everyone at ECW Press has been a dream to work with. I am so fortunate.

Coming this September.

Click here for more information

NMLCT BKTRLR #3

NMLCT BKTRLR #3 is the third book trailer for the book NMLCT, a new collection of poetry by Paul Vermeersch, now available for preorder from ECW Press.

Preorders for the book are now available at https://ecwpress.com/products/nmlct

Music is "antibodies" by wererabbit.

NMLCT BKTRLR #2

This is NMLCT BKTRLR #2, the second book trailer for NMLCT, my eighth book of poetry, out this September from ECW Press, but some advance praises are already in hand. I want to thank Stuart Ross, Annick MacAskill, and Tolu Oloruntoba for singing this book's praises. We write much of our work in solitude, but we publish it in community, and I am grateful for these poets whose work I love so much.

I made this little video as the second book trailer, featuring some excerpts from their comments. 

Music is "The Facility" by wererabbit.  Preorders for the book are now available at https://ecwpress.com/products/nmlct "NMLCT’s assured, diamond-knife vision is better described as augural than speculative. Every word is well chosen, every pixel assertive on this atlas to worlds that are at once obscure and familiar. It is an elegant ultimatum. Its poetry is stretched taut between meta-allegory and instruction manual for seeking, finding, and reforming the self. It calls us to denounce the ambivalent, beveled, and algorithmic recursion of machine thought. It invites us to travel through rebellion and transition to transfiguration, to emerge rewilded and rearranged—a gift the best books leave us with. You’ll want to go back immediately." 

— Tolu Oloruntoba 

"Paul Vermeersch’s beguiling NMLCT articulates both common despair and the resilience of hope. Anchored by form and a keen sense of rhythm, these ambitious poems depict fantastical worlds that mirror the disorientation of our increasingly unbelievable landscape." 

— Annick MacAskill 

"NMLCT is the corner we’ve backed ourselves into—and perhaps a map out of it. This is an essential book, an avalanche of compressed fairy tales for our time. Paul Vermeersch has become more daring and emphatic with every poetry collection, and this book is a blistering mourner’s lament: audacious, brutal, compassionate, and darkly ecstatic. “What on earth,” he asks, “has happened here, and when? Who is the astronaut and who is the ape?” 

— Stuart Ross

First Book Trailer for NMLCT!

NMLCT BKTRLR #1 is the first book trailer for the book NMLCT, a new collection of poetry by Paul Vermeersch, now available for preorder from ECW Press.

NMLCT BKTRLR # 1

PREORDER LINK: https://ecwpress.com/products/nmlct Music by wererabbit: https://wererabbit.bandcamp.com/track/kay-sage Fables and fairytales collide with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and monstrous myths in a world where no one knows what to believe. In his eighth book of poems, Paul Vermeersch responds to the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what isn’t, what is our genuine experience and what is constructed for us by The Algorithm. In a “post-truth” society rife with simulations, misinformation, and computer-generated hallucinations, these poems explore the relationship between the synthetic and the authentic as they raise hope for the possibility of escape from MCHNCT (Machine City) to NMLCT (Animal City), where the promise of “real life” still exists. Available September 2, 2025. PRE-ORDER NOW!

NMLCT is now available for preorder!

COVER REVEAL! 

My eighth collection of poetry, NMLCT, will be published September 02, 2025 by ECW Press. I'm thrilled to be able to share the cover with you, and especially thrilled that it features art by renowned Canadian sculptor David Altmejd. 

If you're the type of person who preorders books, NMLCT is now available for preorder (link below). I know it helps my publisher, and I suppose it helps me, too. Book launch plans will be announced later in the summer. You'll all be invited! 

PREORDER NMLCT NOW

The Wrong Paintings: July 13, 2024 - January 18, 2025

 I finished three paintings yesterday. This is the third.

"Wrong Direction" -- 24"x18", 

acrylic, graphite and coloured pencils on paper.

This is the 30th painting I've made since July 13th, 2024 on paper (all 24"x18"). I've been calling these "The Wrong Paintings." This project has been an exploration of a looser, more immediate and gestural way of image making. I had felt that the "Pixel Error" paintings I'd been making from 2022-2024 had become somewhat habitual, and restraining, and it was time to change creative directions.

I think "Wrong Direction" is the last of this series of "The Wrong Paintings" for now, and I'm ready to try applying this refreshed skillset on a series of new works. In a lot of ways, this is the kind of gestural and expressive immediacy I've been striving for, and that I want to continue to explore. I've purchased some new paper, a little larger this time, and later this year I will probably try returning to canvas. Evolution requires mutation. Onward.