New Book by Tom Cull
Kill Your Starlings
Exploring ecology, art, activism and historiography, Tom Cull writes of his relationships with family and place, pursuing the imperfect program of recollecting and reconstructing the idea of ‘home’ while resisting nostalgia’s dubious erasures. Frank, unabashed, the poems lean into these entanglements with humour and sincerity, chronicling the writer’s vulnerability as a hinge-point in time—between being a son to a father and a father to a son; between a history that can’t be changed and a future that might be.
2023 / Canadian Poetry / $23.95/ 9781554472505 / Trade paper / 112 pp
What I do
I Write
Poet, blogger, editor, publisher and author.
I Teach
Writing teacher at the University of Western Ontario.
I Speak
Professional Speaker about the Arts and the Environment
The River
Advocate and activist for the Deshkan Ziibi or Thames River.
from The Granite into Which It Reaches
We too are pulled by the current; the bones in our toes elongate, fan out, dig into the concrete like jackhammers.
Our eyes bulge, turn black, we clap our webbed hands, bark hoarse benedictions to the water fleeing the city.
Overhead, a great blue heron wallops across the sky, beak down— a needle etching a record of this day into the vinyl of a darkening night.
About
Tom Cull grew up in Huron County (Treaty 29 territory) and now resides in London, Ontario. He teaches creative writing Western University and served as the city’s Poet Laureate from 2016-2018. His chapbook, What the Badger Said, was published in 2013. His first collection of poetry, Bad Animals, was published by Insomniac Press in 2018. Since 2012, Tom has been the director of Antler River Rally, a grassroots environmental group he co-founded with his partner Miriam Love, and their son, Emmett.