The first solo poetry collection by novelist Larissa Lai. AUTOMATON BIOGRAPHIES Automaton Biographies is the first full-length solo poetry book by novelist Larissa Lai (When Fox is a Thousand, Salt Fish Girl). With an ear to the fizz of advertising, pop music, CNN, biotechnology, the Norton Anthology of English Literature, cereal packaging, MuchMusic, new release Sanrio, critical theory, science fiction, anti-racist orga- nizing, rivers and streams, the Internet, and Hollywood, Lai explores the problem of what it means to exist on the boundaries of the human. The book consists of four long poems: “Rachel,” a meditation in the voice of the cyborg figure Rachel from Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner and its source material, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; “nascent fashion,” which addresses contemporary war and its excesses; “Ham,” which circulates around the chimpanzee named Ham sent up into space as part of the Mercury Redstone missions by NASA in the 1960s and later donated to the Coulston Foundation for biomedical research; and “auto matter,” a kind of unfolding autobi- ography told in poems. Ambitious, eloquent, and lushly imbued with life, these poems taken as a whole are a personal and cultural his- tory, a moving testament to being in relation. oh brother artful art thou Larissa Lai searching for the how of our connection Larissa Lai is the author of the novels When Fox is a Thousand (page 35), only to understand yourself shelf shakespeared not stirred Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen, 2002), Eggs in the Basement (Nomados, by the alternate whirr the in of intelligence 2009), and co-author (with Rita Wong) of the poetry book sybil unrest the sin in the pardon (Line Books, 2009). Born in La Jolla, California, Lai grew up in St. John’s, my eden unbroken by the word made fodder NF, and currently lives in Vancouver, where she is an Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature at UBC. She holds a PhD in English from the for reason’s treason telltale heart beating in surrogate body University of Calgary and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of your innocent double frank-n-furtive East Anglia, UK. as pocky’s horror the girl in the picture hearts a fixture in the self-construction of man made ham —from “Ham” isbn 978-1-55152-292-0 poetry 5.5 x 8 | 144 pp | paper poe011000 $19.95 canada / nyp us pub month: october 2009 arsenal pulp press page 15.