Histories

Author: Andrew Steinmetz | ISBN: 1550651412 : 9781550651416 | Format: Paperback | Size: 155x230mm | Pages: 90 | Weight: .158 Kg. | Published: IPG (Véhicule Press) – January 2000 | Availability: In Print | Subjects: Poetry texts & anthologies

Histories is an eclectic and unusual poetry debut

from the author of the creative non-fiction work Wardlife: The Apprenticeship of a Young Writer as a Hospital Clerk published to acclaim in 1999. From the medical history to family history, Histories reveals a poet of multiple personas and postures.

Steinmetz

chooses the clinical medical history to render sympathetic minimalist portraits of the sick and dying. These dramas, spoken between clinicians, are no less than the public screening of private lives. Histories plays like an ensemble of voices-wry, philosophical, and romantic.

As a singer-songwriter, Andrew Steinmetz performed and recorded with Weather Permitting and The Good Cookies-two independent rock bands. His poetry has been published in American and Canadian magazines. He now divides his time between the Westmount Public Library, where he is a reference librarian, and the Montreal Neurological Hospital where he manages a patient information resource centre. He lives in Montreal.

Charged with emotional freight, Steinmetz delivers. Steinmetz is heroically attempting what so few of his contemporaries dare: a divorce from prosaic rhythms and a heated affair with untested syntax. — Jana Prikryl, Literary Review of Canada – June 2001

. . . here is another astonishing poet emerging from Montréal. Who knows where Steinmetz is going, but I know it’s not on a second-hand bookshelf. — Julie Genet, Hour – May 24, 2001

The clinical jargon of Steinmetz’s “medical histories” yields effects that are waggishly eccentric and sometimes quite moving.  — Carmine Starnino, Montreal Review of Books – Fall and Winter, 2000/01

Andrew Steinmetz

was born in Montreal in 1965. He is the author of a memoir, Wardlife: The Apprenticeship of a Young Writer as a Hospital Clerk (Véhicule Press, 1999) and two collections of poetry, Histories (Signal Editions, Véhicule Press, 2001), and Hurt Thyself (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). Wardlife was short listed for the 2000 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction as well as for the 2000 Quebec Writers Federation (QWF) First Book Award and Mavis Gallant Prize for non-fiction.

Histories was short listed for the 2001 QWF A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. His poems and fiction have appeared The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, maisonneuve, The New Quarterly, and Poetry New York. He is a frequent contributor to Books in Canada and the Montreal Review of Books. As a singer-songwriter, he performed and recorded with Weather Permitting and Good Cookies, two indie rock bands. He holds a Masters of Library and Information Sciences from the Université de Montréal as well as a Masters of Arts in English Literature from the University of Toronto. Presently he is the editor of Esplanade Books, the fiction imprint at Véhicule Press. He lives in Ottawa.

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