Book Launch - Mouthfuls of Space by Tom Prime

Join us for the London book launch for Tom Prime for his poetry collection Mouthfuls of Space (Anvil Press, 2021). Tom will be joined by David Barrick who  will be launching his new chapbook Two Dreams: Stratford and The Copyist (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2022); and there will be special guest readings from Jennifer Komorowski, Dave Monture, and Blair Trewartha.

The poems in Mouthfuls of Space offer a dissociative journey through the life of a once-homeless recovering drug addict and victim of childhood abuse. In his debut solo collection, Tom Prime’s hypnotic, surreal voice reveals his transition from the street to the menial labour of factory work. There is beauty here, too, and mordant, bitter comedy: a sprite-like being imagines his hallucinations are a parallel dimension intermeshed with his lived reality on the street, where indescribable creatures coexist with “hyenas dressed as real estate agents” and those who march in “the skeleton parade.” Mouthfuls of Space explores trauma and the dehumanizing enterprise of factory work with sensitivity but also with suffocating desperation. Still, Prime finds comfort in “the mother-shadow of trees, the old light of vibrating stars.”

Tom Prime is an uninvited settler on the stolen land that is Turtle Island. He is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Western University (focussing on Early Modern English Literature). He completed his MFA at the University of Victoria (Specializing in Poetry). His debut solo collection of poetry Mouthfuls of Space was released on Anvil Press last year. This collection was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial award. He came in 2nd place in the Antler River Poetry Contest. He has 4 new poems in the latest issue of Lana Turner Journal. He has a forthcoming visual poem pamphlet set on Blasted Tree Press and will be included in an anthology of annotations to a glitch-generated novel by Kenji Siratori entitled Official Report on the Intransitionalist Topologies of Kenji Siratori: Appendix 8.2.3. His latest collaborative collection, Bird Arsonist, written with Gary Barwin, was released on New Star books earlier this year. His collaborative collection of poems written with Gary Barwin, A Cemetery for Holes, is available from Gordon Hill Press. He has poetry published in Carousel, Ditch, Fjords Review, 2 poems in an earlier issue of Lana Turner, Vallum and many others (in chapbook format, in anthologies, as well as journals).

David Barrick is the author of the poetry book Nightlight (Palimpsest Press, 2022) as well as the chapbooks Two Dreams: Stratford and The Copyist (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2022) and Incubation Chamber (Anstruther Press, 2019). His poetry has recently appeared in THIS Magazine, subTerrain, Grain, and other literary journals. David won first runner-up prize in Pulp Literature’s 2021 Magpie Award for Poetry. He teaches writing at Western University and is Managing Director of Antler River Poetry.

Jennifer Komorowski is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at TMU, and an Oneida scholar interested in psychoanalysis and Indigenous philosophies. She began writing “Bad Lacanian Love Poems” to procrastinate her (now complete) dissertation on women's masochism.

Dave Monture of Six Nations is a retired part time student in Arts and Humanities at Western.

His poetry has been published in Mad in Canada, Science, Psychiatry and Social Justice, and

Watch Your Head, creative works devoted to climate justice. He has read for Poetry

London/Antler River Poetry and Radio Western. He is a member of the Indigenous Writers’

Circle, an Independent Indigenous Creative Voice.

Blair Trewartha’s first collection of poetry, Easy Fix was published by Palimpsest Press in 2014 and shortlisted for the Relit Award. He is the author of three chapbooks: Break In (Cactus Press, 2010), Porcupine Burning (Baseline Press, 2012), and human energy (Anstruther Press, 2022) and his poetry has appeared in Carousel, Prism, Event, Existere, CV2, The Dalhousie Review, and Prairie Fire Magazine. He received an honourable mention in Arc’s 2016 Poem of the Year contest, and third place in Prairie Fire’s 2020 Bliss Carmen Poetry Contest.