Optic Nerve by Matthew Hollett
A poetry collection about photography and perception
Peering inside eyeballs, pondering the paradox of absent stars, and meditating on street scenes by André Kertész, these poems squint sidelong at our ways of seeing the world. Through playful poems about photography and visual perception, Hollett dissects auroras and quarks, atmospheric phenomena, potatoes, bomb craters and peat bog cadavers. This darkly comic collection is shadowed by entoptic paparazzi, haunted by peripheral visions. Born of attentive walking and looking, of footsteps and snapshots, it bears witness to art history and alluvial light, portable keyholes, the pandemic, climate change, and the sheer strangeness of seeing everyday things with ecstatic eyes. (From Brick Books)
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Matthew Hollett is a writer and visual artist in St. John's, Newfoundland. He published his debut book, Album Rock, in 2018. Hollett won the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize for Tickling the Scar.
