Paola Ferrante
ISBN 9781771262248
$17.00 CDN/USA
86 pages
“Paola Ferrante comes out of the gate as one of the strongest new writers in Canada. In What to Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack, the perversions of procedural thinking are exposed in a mock-scientific deconstruction of man’s attempted dominion over women. Classic horror films, biology, fairy tale motifs, and subtle biography weave together in a dance that is grotesque and revealing in the best possible way. This collection will not make you comfortable. It will leave you gaping, nodding your head, dumbfounded both by the brutality of its truth and by the intoxicating craft of its author.”
Robin Richardson, author of Sit How You Want
Restless and often bordering on feral, Paola Ferrante’s poems repeatedly shift shape to animate narratives adapted from folklore, feminist theory, and horror films. On each page they draw blood, proving that there’s no better poet to turn to when wondering What To Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack.
Jim Johnstone, editor of The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Literature
Paola Ferrante’s incisive, dazzling, and, at times, unsettling debut poetry collection What to Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack examines the social, political, and personal impacts of the patriarchy by eviscerating psychoanalysis, history, classic literature, folktales, Hollywood film, and popular music. Ferrante’s razor-sharp critique comes to us in finely-crafted poems that are as brilliant as they are devastating: “Tell everyone I’m smiling / despite the dynamite” and “he’ll argue / he’s due // process; / there are always shades / of grey that remain the same” and “Kitty in a corner / forced to last tango / sob story / so many / watching / no one / made the call”. If ever there was one—this is a poetry book for the #metoo era.
Kathryn Mockler author of The Purpose Pitch
