Curare

Lucian Mattison's poetry collection, Curare, is a work about remembering our humanity in the face of the destabilizing and dehumanizing forces of technology, climate change, and capitalism. The image-rich poems delight in the odd and off-kilter while walking an informal lyrical path through landscapes of the speculative, quotidian, urban, naturalistic, folkloric, and dream-like. At their core, the poems acknowledge the tragedy of humanity's self-made tools of destruction and, at once, ask us to hope that these same tools can become remedies-the arrow poison transformed into healing salve when picked apart and dosed.