Poetry

Frenzy

By Catherine Owen

Winner of the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (Alberta Book Awards)

In Greek mythology the Muses preside over the arts and inspire writers and artists to produce works of genius. In Frenzy, Catherine Owen pays homage to the muse in a six-part compilation of muse-quests, some the author’s, some those of others. These muses can be a person, a place, or even the absurdity itself of indefinitely seeking the muse.

“Catherine Owen is a neo-romantic bard whose idiosyncratic poetry is barbed with aspects of Tough Love wed to the groom of nihilism. This poet wears a black mood for a wedding dress as she casts invective against bourgeois normalcy. Mistress of neologism and its conflicted ally—ambiguity?—this musifier is unabashedly shameless in making herself “lovesick”. A poet taster’s head spins, which may not be a bad thing. In an era of political correctness and its self-righteous terrorisms, Owen’s muse skateboards over society’s niceties as her love junkie heart leaps like an adolescent
butterfly. Revel in the nuances of light and darkness doing a tango in the ineffable quest for the muse’s many forms.”
—Joe Rosenblatt (poet, artist, editor, and recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award)

“Catherine Owen is an extraordinarily gifted poet. It’s not just the sheer sonic pleasure of her language or the largesse of her endlessly inventive imagery but that she is unsettled and unsettling, deeply disobedient and yet almost selfless in her surrender to form. These poems, and especially the Flood-Ghazals, take you down and then drag you up again, gasping for air.”
—Robert Priest (poet, songwriter, playwright, winner of the Milton Acorn Memorial People’s Poetry Award)

ISBN 9781897535004
5.75 x 8 | 108 pp
$15 CAN / $15 US
Rights available:  World