Book Launch: Jay Ritchie's 'Listening in Many Publics'

Join Jay Ritchie, PhD Candidate in the Department of English to celebrate the launch of his new book Listening in Many Publics (Invisible Publishing) on June 27 at Librairie St. Henri Books. There will be readings from McGill English Dept. graduate and writer extraordinaire Kasia Van Schaik and local writer and publisher for Metatron Press, Ashley Obscura. Though the event is free, LSHB encourages registering via Eventbrite. 

Listening in Many Publics is motivated by the possibility of a future that is fulfilling, luminous, and held in common. The book expresses this vision in three long poems which are themselves composed of individual, interlinked poems. Using a circular structure that resists linear capitalist logics, fragmentation that attunes us to sound over sense, and a hybrid form that traverses both poetics and narrative, the poems speak to the necessity of articulating possible futures, of rehearsing different ways of being, and of returning to material truths, together. Plural, civic, and political, the poems locate themselves in the many publics that constitute our individual and social being, interrogate that which brings the subject into existence, and ultimately convey an open, hopeful sensibility in the face of the structures and systems they critique.

Jay Ritchie is a writer, editor, teacher, and McGill English PhD student. Author of the poetry collection Cheer Up, Jay Ritchie (Coach House Books), a collection of short stories, and a poetry chapbook, he has an MFA in Poetry from UMass Amherst and was the Assistant Editor for Metatron Press and Managing Editor of Vallum Magazine. Listening in Many Publics (Invisible Publishing) is his latest book. Jay lives in Tio’tia:ke / Montreal.