The Poet is a Radio

“What if the world were composed of poets? In The Poet Is a Radio the question arises. Money and love, avarice and sensibility are arrested in an ebb and flow of linguistic and essential delights, as poets and poetic souls encounter one another, coping with our time and place. Jack Hannan demonstrates how poetic sensibility alters the electric current of the world.” —Trevor Fergusonrnrn“Tender, innovative, constantly surprising, The Poet Is a Radio explores a familiar city that proves to be a world unto itself. Jack Hannan’s prose is alive to both the wild frequencies of the imagination and the static of everyday life. His writing is a lucid dream.”—Mark Ableyrnrn“There’s a smokiness to the way Jack Hannan sees the world, and it creates its own reality—in this case, a world in which Li Bai, the eighth-century Chinese poet, can show up as an elderly immigrant, a loner living in a warehouse by the river, in a city that both is and isn’t Montreal at the turn of the second millennium. In this dreamlike city, a handful of other singular souls, drawn together by a love of books, art, words and language, collide with Li Bai and with each another in a kind of dance. The storytelling is hypnotic, layered and mysterious, stereophonic, moving through the perceptions of these very different characters until their separate trajectories briefly converge in something like a living poem.”—Robyn Sarah