Electric Affinities - Softcover

In Electric Affinities, Michael Pacey's second poetry collection, everyday household items become points of departure into wonder -- a handsaw becomes a "bird hooded, strung with jesses, strops with its beak." A cup becomes "a tool for gripping liquids." Mirrors are "windows turned inside out, always concentrating, trying to memorize each detail," and scissors are "perpetually plural, twin sisters fastened together." While it is Pacey's particular magic to discover the amazing alchemical properties of everyday objects, in Electrical Affinities he also illuminates the poetic "current" that connects them to larger questions of human nature, language and the environment.

Michael Pacey was born in Fredericton. He received his BA and BEd from the University of New Brunswick, his MFA, MA and PhD from the University of British Columbia. Pacey's first full-length collection of poetry,The First Step, was published by Signature Editions in 2011; his second, Electric Affinities, came out in 2015. His work has appeared in more than twenty literary magazines, includingThe Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Exile, Prairie Fire, and Descant. He has also published a chapbook (Anonymous Mesdemoiselles, 1972), and a children's book (The Birds of Christmas, 1987). He was editor ofPRISM International and has taught at UBC and Lakehead University.