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In Furniture Music, Montreal legend Gail Scott chronicles her years in Lower Manhattan during the Obama era, in a community of poets at the junction between formally radical and political art. Immersing herself in a New York topography that includes St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the Bowery Poetry Club, Scott writes from a ‘Northern’ awareness that is both immediate and inquisitive, from Obama’s election to Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy. Here, readers are situated in conversations around citizenship, gender performance, class, race, feminism, and what it means to write
now. And the author is less a single voice than an assembler, ventriloquizing not only present voices but also a host of earlier writers and philosophers, notably, Gertrude Stein, Viktor Shklovsky, Walter Benjamin. The result is a staggering work of insight and hope during a critical time in American politics and art.
About the author
Gail Scott is the author of
Permanent Revolution (Book*Hug Press, 2021), which was a finalist for the 2021 Grand Prix du livre de Montreal,
Spare Parts (Coach House, 1981),
Heroine (Coach House, 1987, re-issued in 2019 with an introduction by Eileen Myles by Nightboat),
Main Brides (Talonbooks, 1993),
My Paris (Dalkey Archive, 1999),
Spare Parts Plus Two (Coach House, 2002), and
The Obituary (Coach House, 2010; Nightboat 2012). Her essays are collected in
Spaces Like Stairs (Womens Press, 1989) and in
La Théorie, un dimanche (1988) which was translated into English as
Theory, A Sunday (Belladonna, 2013). Scott is co-editor of the New Narrative anthology:
Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House, 2004). Her translation of Michael Delisle’s
Le désarroi du matelot was shortlisted for a 2001 Governor General’s Literary Award.
Summary
In Furniture Music, Montreal legend Gail Scott chronicles her years in Lower Manhattan during the Obama era, in a community of poets at the junction between formally radical and political art. Immersing herself in a New York topography that includes St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the Bowery Poetry Club, Scott writes from a ‘Northern’ awareness that is both immediate and inquisitive, from Obama’s election to Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy. Here, readers are situated in conversations around citizenship, gender performance, class, race, feminism, and what it means to write now. And the author is less a single voice than an assembler, ventriloquizing not only present voices but also a host of earlier writers and philosophers, notably, Gertrude Stein, Viktor Shklovsky, Walter Benjamin. The result is a staggering work of insight and hope during a critical time in American politics and art.
Foreword
- Digital galley and print review copy mailings to major book reviews, literary journals, and library buyers' guides.
- Author interview pitches
- Social media campaign
- Outreach to independent booksellers.
- Outreach to poetry and related literary organizations.
- Publicity and promotion in conjunction with the author events.
- Display at conferences and bookfairs
- Co-op available
