Second year student Andy McGuire is publishing his first poetry collection, Country Club, this fall. We asked Andy to share his favourite debut read:
"It's got to be Letters to Emma Bowlcut by Bill Callahan. His first, and only, book. The jacket copy says it all: 'An unnamed man studies the Vortex and his surroundings. He begins writing letters to a strange woman he is attracted to at a party. In this epistolary novelette set sometime in the future, he tells her of his daily life and a relationship between them unfolds.' This book is the best kind of strange. Drano for the brain. Like listening to someone talk to themselves in a language you never knew you knew."
Country Club is published by Coach House Books: A lyrical wilderness of power, wealth, leisure and desire, the poems freewheel across state lines with panache and flagrant feeling. In this bold debut from Andy McGuire, all passions—even unpleasant ones—stare down the barrel of a world in which freedom is the fifty-first state, and love is the eleventh province.
Country Club has an independent launch at 7pm on Friday, October 2, at Likely General (389 Roncesvalles Ave., Toronto).
And you can also join Andy and the whole Coach House gang for their fall launch event at 7pm on Tuesday, October 6, at the Garrison (1197 Dundas St. W., Toronto).