A False Paradise : Poems
by Brian Rigg

Here are some of the quirky tidbits that Brian Rigg's first book of poetry, A False Paradise , adds to the staid skewer of Canadian contemporary poetry: fornicating felines, cold-footed insects, fly-ridden domiciles, toad orators, whacked-out spiders, and IQ-deficient fish.

Those flavours, combined with the human rot that festers at the core of A False Paradise , make for a pungent and emotive collection.

"Blue Window Story" invokes the spectre of a physically depleted mother, and "In Dark June" seethes with love lost: "I'm hard against the night you died, that wicked bullet weaving its way into your chest / minutes after I talked to you."

"Tiger Lily" is an ecstasy-fuelled ode to a drag queen, but there's no bliss--chemical or otherwise--in works like "Night Blossoms," a sad tale of ass peddlers who "fell from grace in / out-of-order washroom stalls."

Rigg packs a powerful first-person delivery seasoned with searing quips from the periphery, as in "Africville," which excavates some dirty Canadian history: "pipes carried the white man's waste / to our shores and we were glad to / have their dumpsites at our doorsteps."

Fraught with hellish realities, Rigg's A False Paradise is no place for fools.

- sigcino moyo

original publication: AMAZON.ca : Editorial Reviews