MANTIS

Overview

To explore Mantis is to explore language as organic material in formation, information as material. The work is bitmined, one might say, from The Maintains by Clark Coolidge, taking as rudiment processes of jazz improvisation, particularly as practiced by musicians who may take a single step, and then follow where that step leads. To follow Mantis where it leads is to enter the forest, the cavern, the word hoard, and to find oneself as “light” or “as rose,” and to cross that place into a realm of creative possibility, where the final “as if” may mean open to everything.

Author Biography

David Dowker was born in Kingston, Ontario but has lived most of his life in Toronto. He was editor of The Alterran Poetry Assemblage from 01/01/1996 to 01/01/2004 (which can be accessed at Library and Archives Canada). He published Machine Language in 01/01/2010, Virtualis: Topologies of the Unreal (with Christine Stewart) in 01/01/2013 (shortlisted for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for poetry), and Mantis in 01/01/2018.