Moosechief—Meese Who Get Into Mischief, Volume 1, is something not to be ignored. Harkin, in his unforgettable style, combines several moose (whom he refers to as ‘meese’) and mischief, cruise ships, Tom Cruise, and Khrushchev, and sets the collection on a parallel world where underwear was never invented. Relax and enjoy.

In Pillow Talk of the Dead, David Clink masterfully weaves a cycle of poems around an imagined sexual liaison between Louis Riel, Laura Secord, and Anne Shirley, as seen through the eyes of Peter Puck and Alfred Sung. If this collection is not shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, then I don’t know what.

Troy Harkin’s Cologne of the Mountain Giants gets into your grill. It takes the side of creatures who have been misunderstood throughout the millennia. Using mint leaves, lemon zest, tonka bean, amber, vanilla, cedarwood, and oak moss, Harkin lavenders in the face of death. Here is a poet whose poetry is a reflection of himself: intense, masculine, and refreshing.

Given Canadian literature’s penchant for narcissistic self-reflection, David Clink is Snow White to everyone else’s Maleficent. Like Snow White, Clink’s poetry is pure, polyphyletic, peripatetic, and phlegmatic. Also, he has a thing for cohabitating with Dwarves.

I once asked the question: Who can have vampires piloting flying saucers through the centre of planets that have water at their core? Troy Harkin can. This is poetry that matters. Period. Exclamation mark.

David Clink’s newest work, Voice Appropriation: The Dummy Speaks, is finally here. The collection comes with a dummy named Farnsworth (handcrafted and signed by the writer himself) so you may hone your ventriloquist skills while reading the poems aloud. I read it and liked it. Until Farnsworth began reciting the poems on his own.

I’ve Been Working on the Whale Road is Troy Harkin’s magnum opus. This book-length poem ponders a post-apocalyptic, magic realism future informed by moments of sadness in a world where whales have become the dominant life form and they have just finished building the first intercontinental ‘whale-way.’ A must read.

If you’re looking for a pop-up book that doubles as a Ouija board, grimoire, Vietnamese cookbook and naughty limericks for morticians then I have just the book for you. David Clink’s Smile! You’re on Memento Mori! is all of these things and so much more. David Clink is clearly not just multi-talented but omnipotent as well.

In Macho Picchu About Nothing, Troy Harkin takes familiar Shakespearean characters and puts them side-by-side with ancient aliens, an army of archaeologists, and an Archaeopteryx, interspersed with llamas, in a ground-breaking work set in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru. Bring your Mattock, Marshalltown Trowel, and shovel, and dig in.

Singularity: The One Word Poems of David Clink. Unsettling. Uplifting. Arousing. Carousing. Sublime.