Ryan Fitzpatrick – författare

Written during country music's most recent ascent in popularity, this poetry "e;LP"e; features ten "e;tracks"e; that each tip language out of key. Dwelling on whether it is best to look backward to a seemingly better past, longing for a way to make things great again, or to stare into the abyss of the future, gambling that entry into paradise will provide release, No Depression in Heaven resolutely riffs on our latter-day anxiety, asking how we respond to bad times and what it means to hold onto something toxic because of the comforts it affords.

An off-beat examination of the denials that underpin extractive capitalism.From the cratered lake of Chennai, India to the environmental racism of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Tokyo-3, Sunny Ways oscillates between images of environmental collapse and resistance.Standing waist deep in the massive tailing ponds of Alberta’s Tar Sands, Sunny Ways wades through the tangled complicities of climate catastrophe. In the process, the book grapples with the failure of political hope and the intransigence of climate change denialism. Fitzpatrick channels his experiences growing up in the big sky economic pragmatism of Calgary, where oil pays the rent and puts food on the table, into an essayistic pair of long poems that echo the ecological poetics of writers like Rita Wong, Stephen Collis, and Juliana Spahr.