PRAISE FOR POETRY AND PROSE FROM DEAN GESSIE
“Dean Gessie’s scintillating goat song reveals a poet and writer at the height of his powers. Defying genre and canon, Gessie shapeshifts, skin shucks and shimmies in this masterfully crafted, explosively seditious, viscerally engaging magnum opus of satire. Equal parts alchemy, threnody and rebel gospel, goat song is a potent protest song to human, animal and planetary suffering. Threaded through with finely honed lyric, motif, imagery and metaphor, not a word is spare. This collection sings throughout with razor’s edge wit and supremely slick syntax.”
Anne Casey, poet and writer, winner of multiple international awards, including first prize in the American Writers Review Contest 2021 and winner of the 2021 iWoman Global Award in the field of literature.
Gessie’s poems “torrent through the mind, an effort of resistance language like crashing a bus into a TV screen. Genius with a pocketful of broken fetters.”
Tongo Eisen-Martin, from Enizagam Literary Journal, winner of an American Book Award, a California Book Award and shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize.
“Gessie’s goat song reads like a whirlwind holding a machete. It takes no prisoners. He explores human failings and fragility as a Bacchanalian dance of visceral sensuality. There is so much to savour in this brilliant collection. Eulogy for Empire [the longest poem] is a tour de force.”
Fawzia Kane, poet and educator, author of Tantie Diablesse by Waterloo Press and Houses of the Dead by Thamesis Publications.
“Readers searching for the artful language of Fitzgerald and the cultural relevance of Achebe in a volume that speaks directly to global citizens of the twenty-first century have finally found their lost ark in Anthropocene. It’s not difficult to find writers today who explore problematic issues within our brave new world of cultural collisions, gender politics and new-look human subjugation. What is incredibly rare, however, is to find a writer willing to criticize contemporary social ills with both empathic concern and vehement distaste—as Gessie does—while remaining faithful to the craft of literary fiction. There’s no dark corner he won’t articulately explore in this astonishing collection of stories. Readers will wrestle with Gessie’s thinly veiled accusations of our own complicity with social injustice and, yet, they will also laugh along with his wide array of marginalized, irreverent voices. Anthropocene is, at once, a buoyant, hilarious and deeply disturbing experience.”
Keith Kupsch
Director of the Joshua Weinzweig Creative Writing Program
Pickering College
UNCOLLECTED PRESS: The Raw Art Review 