Book Description
king’s(mère) is an imaginative and audacious interpretation of the life of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s 10th and longest-serving Prime Minister. In his debut collection, Nathan Dueck takes the tradition of the long prairie poem and morphs it into political (auto)biography. Through séances, letters, diary entries and faux bible scripture, all written by William King, he explores the realm where poetry and prose meet. Dueck presents King as a young man who seeks, and sees, himself reflected through his mother, Isabel. He writes her letters, confessing his fondness for visiting "the stroll" in search of companionship, and his affinity for spirits and scripture. These lengthy letters are not delivered to Isabel, as her mailman intercepts them and interprets King’s writings on his own. king’s(mère) does not offer us the William Lyon Mackenzie King of our school books, but a character "ashamed/to record it all."
From the Back Cover
"Dueck’s ventriloquism-whether Edwardian, Biblical, bawdy, or childish-rings human and cheerful about blowing up the lyric poem. king’s(mère) also shatters the stereotype of Mackenzie King as utterly repressed and a bit nutty: instead Dueck draws us into a boiling mad emotional life."-Maurice Mierau, author of Ending With Music "Nathan Dueck's syphilitic mythologizing of Canada's only already-mythic historical character-its longest serving and most parapsychological Prime Minister, the boiled-veal Oedipus who steered us through World War II-is a dish as morphically peculiar, and as singular to taste, as a dog, a mother and a whore all wrapped up in a warm ectoplasmic crepe. Finally, a Canadian that's bigger than life! Bigger even than Canada! Thank you Mr. Dueck"-Guy Maddin, director of Archangel, Heart of the World and The Saddest Music in the World
