Ryan Kamstra: Into The Drowned World Book Launch November 18, 2008

Radio Creek Productions
+ tomboyfriend visionary sleepingbag tours
in conjunction with Insomniac Press
present the November 18th Toronto launch of:
into the drown_ed world
a new mr. kamstra bibliographic entry
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 7:00pm

Mitzi's Sister, 1554 Queen Street West, Toronto



In the year 2000, what was called the world, as you might remember, vanished.


There are pictures, of course. Trade and finance were everywhere. A tower fell over somehow. Wars went by patiently, with a cause. The streets were ocean rivers. The wedding portraits were gorgeously short lived. Airports stopped maintaining the pastoral illusion of other places, places to see, stories to take home. Cats took up residence.

Dropped into this blueberry-grainy apocalypse, a nodding, benumbed, silly man with an ill-suited, facial-tic-like proclivity for showbiz, his archaic modicum of flash, carefully begins reassembling the world as he remembers it out of the scraps that remain in his one room apartment. A memory of being in love, what that might have been. A memory of an absurdly talled-up sense of purpose. Some macaroni and glitter. A poster of Madonna who may have been the goddess of love or the virgin mother of the spirit of music. His express duty: to reconstruct the world as it was lost, verbatim, in miniature, in his room. He leaves his room only to go to a job. The job keeps changing. Beyond that, not much else does.

He hopes to make a movie.

Into the Drown_ed World are the fragmentary lyrics detailing his progress at this exemplary day to day hobby.

Launch:

Readings will begin after 8pm.

Music starts at 10pm.

-- The night will feature readings by Nick Thran

-- Madonna trivia with music critic Carl Wilson. Prize-ies!

-- A stupendous prize for the best Madonna costume!

-- Tinkle and roll by glam pop 1950s ragtime outfit, as reimagined for the future: Tomboyfriend!

* * *

Advance Praise for iNTO tHE dROWNED wORL_D:

Flamboyant, sensuous, and seamed with slick finesse, Kamstra's turns of phrase are more lubricated than 99% of CanLit. His Into the Drowned World will make you want to feel like a virgin, and read like a forager, over and over. — Margaret Christakos, author of Sooner

Kamstra's kitsch kamera-angled poetics of excess floods across the text's face, giving radical pop new meaning. In this hyper-lyric world, porn, Nixon, robots and globalisation all have intercourse, generating surprising, delicious artifice. Apollinaire has Madonna's love child: Ryan's wild, wired, weird and witty daughter. This is poetry so over-the-edge innovative, it makes Dada look dim, and the future old hat. Into the Drowned World sets a new high-water mark for 21st century Canadian poetry. — Todd Swift, author of Seaway: New & Selected Poems

The poems of Into the Drowned World keep leaping out of "the shallow grave" of post-modernist, post-capitalist life. These poems, so linguistically inventive, so over the top, so associatively awake, are profound expressions of "a hunger in this world… not even for food." — Rebecca Seiferle, author of Wild Tongue

Biography

Into the Drowned World is a visionary work of pop-culture apocrypha, recited by a nodding, benumbed narrator who is perpetually reliving the day before the turn of the millennium. At its heart is Kamstra's breathless, ecstatic response to Madonna's infamous Drowned World Tour of 2001, which forms both a lyrical and lexical shorthand for our stunted relations, abandoned tenets, and an almost forgotten civil society.

Ryan Kamstra is writer of poems, fiction and songs. His first book of poems, Late Capitalist Sublime, was published by Insomniac Press in 2002. As a musician he is also known by the name Scratch Kamstra (albums "all fall down" 2002 and "i want an army" 2005), and his band, Tomboyfriend (album "don't go to school" due out next year), is fast becoming a cult sensation. He has won prizes for porn. Visit him at http://www.ryankamstra.com/


Past and recent Press: http://www.ryankamstra.com/main/Press.html


*** Visit Insomniac Press at http://www.insomniacpress.com/


*** Visit Mitzi's Sister at http://www.mitzissister.com/


***** ORDER iNTO tHE dROWNED wORLD:
http://www.amazon.ca/Into-Drowned-World-Ryan-Kamstra/dp/1897178662/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221957307&sr=8-1

Official Website: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=25660759420