Interview: Open Book Toronto

Here’s an interview I did with Open Book Toronto about Diversion and the ideas behind it.

I started recording ALL my thoughts instead of just the ones that came from those moments of epiphany that sometimes led to poems. The rush of ideas and thoughts was enormous, but of course, the vast majority of them were idiotic, or profane, or pornographic, or otherwise horrifying to me. My mind was sometimes pinging off the works of Seamus Heaney and sometimes off the works of Taylor Swift. Sometimes I had an idea while watching a sitcom, other times while watching a cat video, other times while shopping Amazon, other times while watching porn, and still other times while listening to my kids talk about Nintendo. I decided to keep it all – the good, the bad, and the ugly — and see what came of it. And a sort of aphorism-like poetry came out of it.

Now, obviously I didn’t mean to suggest I’m a porn watcher (I bet my SEO is doing great right now!), but rather that pop-up porn is a thing that happens when clicking through from random websites. Clearly I need to read my interviews over before I let them be published. 🙂

Reviews: Winnipeg and St. John’s

The first two reviews for Diversion are in, and they’re great! Jonathan Ball’s poetry column in the Winnipeg Free Press gives a few paragraphs, claiming:

“Murray jostles between rage and comedy… Murray doesn’t simply mimic online chatter. Each line is self-contained, but also scaffolds its poem. Diversion may seem tailor-made for devotees of social media, but it’s actually for people who hate social media.”

In The Overcast, Shannon Webb-Campbell does a sort of profile review and writes:

“Instead of harbouring poetry’s quiet emotions, Diversion harnesses anger, bliss, shame, and awe.”

Events: Diversion in October

I’ve got a few events coming up in October in St. John’s and Ontario. Come see me!

• St. John’s Launch
  Oct 8 at 8pm
  The Ship
• Poetry London
  Oct 14 at 7:30pm
  167 Wortley Road, London
• Toronto Launch
  Oct 20 at 8pm
  Bar Italia, College Street
• Pivot Reading Series
  Oct 21 at 8pm
  The Steady, 1051 Bloor Street West