Touch Anywhere to Begin

Poetry

About the book

In Jim Nason's fifth collection of poetry, Touch Anywhere to Begin, poems are set in a physical world where full-throttle desire commingles with love, loss and grief. Although death is ever present — death of a father, death of a friend — there is a life-affirming/mystical quality at the core of the book. Nason reminds us that the city is both real and surreal, a place of creatures and buildings, imagination and deep emotions.

About the author

Award-winning author Jim Nason has published five poetry collections as well as a short story collection. Spirit of a Hundred Thousand Dead Animals is his third novel. His stories, essays and poems have been published in journals and anthologies across Canada and the US, including Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2008, 2010 and 2014 and he has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Award in both fiction and poetry categories. He is the founder and organizer of Canada’s annual human rights poetry event, Meet Me in the Middle: Writers on Rights. Jim is a frequent participant on fiction and poetry panels. Jim was born in Montreal and has lived in Calgary, Vancouver, and Syracuse. He holds degrees from McGill, Ryerson and York Universities and is the owner/publisher of Tightrope Books in Toronto, where he currently lives.

Excerpt

from Touch Anywhere to Begin

Many men came to the windowless room.
I was young, semi-conscious, drunk. The tentative
man touched my ankle, then calf. For the aggressive
one, for his leathery tongue, his knotted grip, I slept
and woke. I sat, rolled over, licked his black boot,
begged like a dog. A third man kissed me
lovingly, on the lips, and I cried.

Mastercard put up a pop-up
sales cave, an atmospheric detour off the subway path,
concrete floor seductive, blue neon dim. We came
by the thousands, the rush hour surge, through
Union Station—for texture and wonderment, the warm,
glowing screen. Touch Anywhere to Begin it said.
Tap to Bobble. Swipe to Spin.