
NMLCT
Poems
Paul Vermeersch(Author)
ECW Press,Canada
Published on 18. December 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
120 pages
978-1-77041-835-6 (ISBN)
Description
Poetry that explores our “post-truth” society, NMLCT holds up a mirror not only to nature, but also to its unnatural distortions and facsimiles. Imagine The Matrix retold by the reanimated cyborg bodies of the Brothers Grimm.
“Paul Vermeersch has become more daring and emphatic with every poetry collection, and this book is a blistering mourner’s lament: audacious, brutal, compassionate, and darkly ecstatic. ‘What on earth,’ he asks, ‘has happened here, and when? Who is the astronaut and who is the ape?’” — Stuart Ross, author of The Book of Grief and Hamburgers and The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky
Fables and fairy tales collide with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and monstrous myths in a world where no one knows what to believe. In his eighth book of poems, Paul Vermeersch responds to the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what isn’t, what is our genuine experience and what is constructed for us by The Algorithm. In a “post-truth” society rife with simulations, misinformation, and computer-generated hallucinations, these poems explore the relationship between the synthetic and the authentic as they raise hope for the possibility of escape from MCHNCT (Machine City) to NMLCT (Animal City), where the promise of “real life” still exists.
All precisely 16 lines long — identically formed as though mass-produced — these poems are themselves artificial creations, products of the imagination, sometimes disorienting but always vivid. In NMLCT, Vermeersch gives us his answer to an existence in thrall to the artificial. But it also foretells a different future, one where the air and the grass and the trees, and all the life they engender, might always be genuine and sensed and safe.
“Paul Vermeersch has become more daring and emphatic with every poetry collection, and this book is a blistering mourner’s lament: audacious, brutal, compassionate, and darkly ecstatic. ‘What on earth,’ he asks, ‘has happened here, and when? Who is the astronaut and who is the ape?’” — Stuart Ross, author of The Book of Grief and Hamburgers and The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky
Fables and fairy tales collide with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and monstrous myths in a world where no one knows what to believe. In his eighth book of poems, Paul Vermeersch responds to the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what isn’t, what is our genuine experience and what is constructed for us by The Algorithm. In a “post-truth” society rife with simulations, misinformation, and computer-generated hallucinations, these poems explore the relationship between the synthetic and the authentic as they raise hope for the possibility of escape from MCHNCT (Machine City) to NMLCT (Animal City), where the promise of “real life” still exists.
All precisely 16 lines long — identically formed as though mass-produced — these poems are themselves artificial creations, products of the imagination, sometimes disorienting but always vivid. In NMLCT, Vermeersch gives us his answer to an existence in thrall to the artificial. But it also foretells a different future, one where the air and the grass and the trees, and all the life they engender, might always be genuine and sensed and safe.
More details
Edition
No Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Montreal
Canada
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
113 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77041-835-6 (9781770418356)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Paul Vermeersch is a poet, multimedia artist, and literary editor. His last book of poetry was Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995–2020. A professor of creative writing and publishing at Sheridan College, he also edits his own imprint, Buckrider Books, for Wolsak & Wynn Publishers. He lives in Toronto, ON.