Terrarium

Reviews / Votes

I'll never fully understand how Matthew Walsh manages to document life so cleanly. What I do understand is my need to read and reread all of it - the dreams, the waking life stories, the persistent doubts, the powerful desires. -- Ben Ladouceur, author of <i>Mad Long Emotion</i> Toronto poet Matthew Walsh's second collection is a fragile negotiation with the confusion and worry of how to be fully human in our modern world. * <i>That Shakespearean Rag</i> * I want to grab a coffee with the speaker of Terrarium. I want to walk around with them and listen to all the funny deep things they have to say about art and what they did last night and the bizarre things that live on the internet. I want to go off on a tangent with the speaker of Terrarium and never come back and end up in some bar, at last call, drinking whatever a curdled birthday cake shot is. This book brought to mind the line by Wallace Stevens, "And there I found myself more truly and more strange." This is a strange book, brilliant and true. -- Kayla Czaga, author of <i>Midway</i> In Terrarium, Matthew Walsh builds a world teeming with donkey statues, deer skeletons, and howling dogs, gentle and unsettling observations of daily life, and the wry wisdom of a tender, visionary voice. These brilliant and devastating poems of intimacy and estrangement are a masterclass in understatement and the subtle music of the poetic line. What a joy to peer inside Walsh's "wet mysterious brain" and live awhile in the compulsive, whirling universe of these poems. -- Cassidy McFadzean, author of <i>Crying Dress</i> What's really beautiful about Terrarium is its confessional tone, its pure and unabashed honesty. The speaker tells the truth as they see it, and the observations become well-crafted images and metaphors. -- Kim Fahner * <i>periodicities</i> * Matthew Walsh guides the reader into a city full of stories with sex, graffiti, hurt, and the kind of humour that is both sprung from survival and makes you want to sit next to it at a party. Terrarium is a city-infused loneliness that is rooted in satire and surrealism. This book is so deeply queer that it should have its own brand. -- Charlie Petch, author of <i>Why I Was Late</i> Terrarium is an exceptional collection of confessional poems. Each poem is a story that is so raw, powerful, and very emotional. I had chills reading these poems. This is one of my favourite poetry books ever. -- Hasan Namir, author of <i>Umbilical Cord</i> Matthew Walsh's Terrarium leaves me aching, inspired, in awe. To quote the poet themself, I am amazed at Walsh's power - "how much I have had to keep straight." This power manifests in Walsh's crafting of patient, artful meaning from the alienating flux of twenty-first century life and in their efforts to confront, resist, and counter the destructive limitations of straightness as a dominant cultural force. In performing this urgent, necessary work, Terrarium is as tender and attentive as it is transformative and profound. -- Daniel Scott Tysdal, author of <i>The End Is in the Middle</i> "After reading Terrarium by Matthew Walsh I'm filled with an urgency to say: This is the kind of poetry we need more of." -- Michael Russell * <i>The Miramichi Review</i> *