Butt out, Dante. Move over, Milton. Piss off, Pound. Outta the way, Olson. Here comes Cosmographia—a post-Lucretian faux micro-epic, the latest ground breaking incursion into the ever popular spectacle of the Epic Poem. Tracking the classic epic journey through the unfolding cosmos toward home, though occasionally disoriented by milling cows with similar intent, Cosmographia teems with nasty political invective, scurrilous spiritual slander, and endless exploitive sexual innuendo. Taking as its muses Cab Calloway and Charles Mingus, by the time it gets home, Cosmographia has subjected the epic to unspeakable acts in the name of linguistic rectumtude, dada terrorism, and sporadic ejaculations of self-expression. Oh yeah!—poetry will never be the same.

Michael Boughn worked in the Teamsters for nearly 10 years before returning to university to earn a PhD in 1986 after studying with poets John Clarke and Robert Creeley. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Iterations of the Diagonal, Dislocations in Crystal, 22 Skidoo / SubTractions, Cosmographia – a post-Lucretian faux micro-epic (short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2011), and most recently, Great Canadian Poems for the Aged Vol. 1 Illus. Ed. (BookThug, 2012). He has also published books for young adults, including the Maple Award nominated Into the World of the Dead, a mystery novel, and a descriptive bibliography of the American poet, H.D. He recently edited (with Victor Coleman) Robert Duncan’s The H.D. Book for the University of California Press. He has also published numerous articles on film, writing, architecture and music, most recently "The War on Art and Zero Dark Thirty" in CineAction. He has taught courses at the University of Toronto since 1993, recently focusing primarily on American writing with special emphasis on the innovative writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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• Shortlisted for the 2011 Governor General’s Award for Poetry