To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Born to be an outsider because of a rare genetic disorder, Kallmann syndrome, Brian Brett lived an androgynous childhood of abuse and sexual harassment. In his teen years he slid into the waterfall of poetry, becoming an auto-didactic polymath, writing – as he says – “sideways” to the academic poetry of his times.

Though raised into manhood in the back of a bootlegger’s truck, Brett, as the hometown outsider, took on the outside world, delving into ancient alchemical mysteries, the poètes maudits of Jean-Arthur Rimbaud’s days, the rhythms of various tribal cultures, the talking blues, the rhapsodic illuminations of jazz – all the while gathering field notes from nights around camp fires.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go is a collection of poems written over the past 20 years, a collection that speaks with a child’s open directness, in fierce ironies, a sometimes bent logic, a justifiable fear of his body, of loves won and lost, and the hallelujahs of a man standing on the lip of the grave. Brett has a unique spirit, a unique musical voice.

Brian Brett is a poet, fictionist, memoirist, journalist, and former chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. His 14 books include The Colour of Bones in a Stream, Coyote: A Mystery, and The Globe and Mail book-of-the year, Uproar’s Your Only Music (published by Exile Editions). His best-selling Trauma Farm won numerous prizes, including the Writers’ Trust Award for best Canadian non-fiction. To Your Scattered Bodies Go won the CBC Poetry Prize*. His last collection of poems, The Wind River Variations, was released in 2014. The final book in his trilogy of memoirs, the award-winning Tuco, was published in 2015. He is also the recipient of the Lieutenant-General’s Award and the Matt Cohen Lifetime Achievement award. He is currently finishing a new novel and, always, writing new poems. He lives in Vancouver, B.C.