Rain (2022)

A pamphlet published by Knife Fork Book (buy)

Branches (2018)

Winner of the inaugural Nelson Ball Prize

Buy directly from the publisher, Book*hug, here. Also available wherever fine books are sold.

Praise for Branches

“These minimalist yet deeply meditative poems focus on the commonplace: how bare branches frame the sky, the movement of clouds, how light reflects off wood. They amount to an interrogation of perception itself, and in particular, the connection between thinking and seeing.” —Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star

“Truscott’s lines bristle with thin, cold attention to their own details. Meditative, minimalist and not to be missed.” —Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press

*

“With their sonic precision and hyper-intelligence, the poems in Branches are wholly immersive. They slow the breath, loosen the mind, and dispel the self. Like Kay Ryan, Truscott has a knack for logical subversion, shifting perception seamlessly until one supposed certainty becomes another, and the foundation is not just shaken but obliterated. What we are left with is the expansiveness of pure potentiality.

Branches will change you, and for that, at the very least, it deserves your full attention.” —Robin Richardson, author of Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis and Sit How You Want

*

“Mark Truscott’s Branches is a unique and assured meditative work, at once ancient and wholly contemporary, a space where Stevens, Ashbery, and Basho might mingle and discover some as-yet unnoticed path. “There are smooth surfaces it seems one can only buy,” Truscott adroitly observes. Branches is full of lines ready to take root and reward, allowing perception all its richness but also changing and transforming it with a graceful and almost natural pressure. Reader, these poems are the furthest thing from those surfaces.” —Jeff Latosik, author of Dreampad

Reviews

Barb Carey in the Toronto Star

Jonathan Ball in the Winnipeg Free Press

On rob mclennan’s blog (includes two full poems from the book)

Nature (2010)

Buy directly from the publisher, Book*hug, here. Also available wherever fine books are sold.

Said Like Reeds or Things (2004)

Buy directly from the publisher, Coach House Books, here. Also available wherever fine books are sold.