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The Absence of Zero is a triumphantly-executed celebration of the Canadian tradition, the long poem. Consisting of 256 16-line quartets, and 34 free-form interruptions, this slow-moving haunting work is a beautiful example of "thinking in language," a meditation that explores time and memory in both content and form. The 20th century is already more than 20 years past:
The Absence of Zero is Kolewe's elegy to that era, and the disparate fragments of its ideas that continue to affect and disrupt our present.
Praise for R. Kolewe: "Kolewe enacts a curious, seemingly imperceptible talent for rendering nostalgia party to a mode of true grace, not the flatly sentimental, but instead this work invokes the cool gravity of viewing one's self-but-not seated alone in a quiet room, seemingly suspended forever in a discrete moment of space-time." --Liz Howard, Griffin Poetry Prize winning author of
Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent
About the author
R. KOLEWE was born in Montreal. Educated in physics and engineering at the University of Toronto, he pursued a successful career in the software industry for many years, while living in a picturesque village in southwestern Ontario. Always a reader, he began to devote his time to writing not long after returning to Toronto in 2007. His work has appeared online at
ditch,
e-ratio, and
The Puritan. He also takes photographs.
