Friday Special Blend
Friday September 1st, 2023 with Susan Johnston
Beast Body Epic: New work by Amanda Earl

About Beast Body Epic: "Beast Body Epic is for anyone who’s circled the drain or knows someone who has. The book is about having the shit kicked out of you & surviving. "Amanda Earl’s Beast Body Epic delivers on the promise of its title, fusing visual, lyric, and narrative poems with classical mythology to tell a story that’s part body horror, part fever dream, and part testament of survival from a poet who refuses to die. " Jim Johnstone, author of The King of Terrors "Beast Body Epic is a hypnotic chronicle of illness and recovery witnessed through a kaleidoscopic looking-glass. Equally tender and brutal with honesty, Earl gives us a beguiling long-form poem about what the body and spirit can endure and how we can survive and thrive. Wisdom crafts this work, a deeply lived understanding that can only come from enduring the unendurable. Luscious and wildly resonant, Beast Body Epic will astound, move, and give you strength." Sandra Ridley, author of Vixen “In Beast Body Epic, Amanda Earl refracts the experience of unwellness through an assortment of communications. She leans into visual poetry, the epic, allusion, disassociation, memoir, verse, prose, fable, allegory, and other modes in order to tell a complex story in a surprisingly succinct work. The variation is not only necessary, it’s seamless, and Amanda’s text flows with the protagonist through crisis into stasis and onward.“ Elee Kraljii Gardiner, An Introduction to Beast Body Epic. Launches are taking place in Montreal (November 5, 2023, Accent Reading Series, 7:30pm); Zoom (November 12, 2023 2pm) and Toronto (The Transac Club Living Room, November 19, 2023, 3pm). More info on readings, reviews and interviews will also be available on AmandaEarl.com. Amanda's playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3YaA31DCbjUNTbvpDXc1MZ?si=8b36f51006cf404b