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Book Launch / Unbecoming by Neil Surkan
December 10, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm PST
On Friday, Dec 10th at 7pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books, and writer Neil Surkan for the in-person launch of his sophomore poetry collection, “Unbecoming” (2021, McGill-Queen’s University Press). Neil will be joined by special guests Adèle Barclay, Kyla Jamieson, Tolu Oloruntoba, and Kirby – in an intimate reading session to celebrate poetry and literature.
The book launch will be hosted in-person at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver. The event is free, and registration is mandatory.
In person events: Due to the latest recommendations from the BC Health Authority, all guests attending in-person events at Massy Arts require double-vaccination and must wear a mask.
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Click HERE to register
Click HERE to purchase “Unbecoming” by Neil Surkan
Click HERE to purchase “On High” by Neil Surkan
Click HERE to purchase “Renaissance Normcore” by Adèle Barclay
Click HERE to purchase “Body Count” by Kyla Jamieson
Click HERE to purchase “The Junta of Happenstance” by Tolu Oloruntoba
Click HERE to purchase “Poetry is Queer” by Kirby
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The Book
Unbecoming, Neil Surkan’s sophomore collection, clings to hope while the world deteriorates, transforms, and grows less hospitable from moment to moment. Interplaying tenderness with dogged perseverance, these poems tumble through vignettes of degraded landscapes, ebbing spiritual communities, faltering men, and precarious friendships.
As the world “appears, exceeds, and un- / becomes too quickly for certainty, / just enough for love,” the poems in Unbecoming face the horizon with wary eyes and refuse to turn away.
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The Author
Neil Surkan is the author of the poetry collections Unbecoming (2021) and On High (2018), both from McGill-Queen’s University Press, and the chapbooks Their Queer Tenderness (Knife-Fork-Book, 2020) and Super, Natural (Anstruther Press, 2017).
His poems and reviews have appeared in numerous Canadian literary magazines. He currently lives and teaches in Nanaimo, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, with Luca, Edi, and Lloyd.
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