Stranger

In Stranger, Nyla Matuk’s provocative, unabashedly sensual voice leads us to revelations about how our lives are increasingly disembodied by social media’s flattened, outward identity markers. In place of this contested sense of self, Stranger reckons with a range of possible states of unknowing. Have we over-determined our identities, and thus diminished our appetites? “I fell asleep between two cold rivers,” Matuk reports, “while the blue shadows of uncomplicated / conifers leaned into their own.” Bold and spontaneous, piling images and ideas on top of each other to create opulent sound patterns, these poems reawaken the reader’s sense of wonder.

Reviews

“We’re all strangers, even if we think we know each other. Poet Nyla Matuk artfully meditates on our disconnected digital age, while awakening a sensuality to this vulnerable state of unknowing… [She] creates space for the mundane hum of the every day, and opens towards a sense of curiosity. Stranger harnesses the unknown within, and makes it safe to uncover an estranged self.” -Shannon Webb-Campbell, Montreal Review of Books