Parrot Fever

An extraordinary long poem by the winner of the Governor General’s Award for poetry, presented in surreal tandem with the brilliant full-colour collages composed by distinguished artist Michel Christensen.

Poet-painter Joe Rosenblatt was born in Toronto in 1933. He started writing in the early sixties, and in 1966 his first book, The L.S.D. Leacock, was published. Since then he has continued with more than a dozen books of poetry and fiction, many complete with his own illustrations. His selected poems (1962-1975), Top Soil, won the Governor-General’s Award for poetry. Another volume of selected poems, (1963-1985), Poetry Hotel, won The B.C. Book Prize, 1986 for poetry.

Illustrated by the poet, a bilingual edition of his sea sonnets Madre Tentacolare (A Tentacled Mother) has been translated into Italian by Prof. Alfredo Rizzardi of the University of Bologna and published in Italy. A selection of Rosenblatt’s poetry was translated by Ada Donati and published in June 2001 by Schifanola Editore, Ferrara, Italy. In 1996 Toronto’s Exile Editions released A Tentacled Mother in the original along with his selected prose (which included selections from his critically-acclaimed autobiography, Escape From the Glue Factory, about growing up Jewish in Protestant Toronto of the 40’s and selected poems, The Rosenblatt Reader. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals in North America.

Rosenblatt has held several writer-in-residence positions in Canadian universities and libraries, as well as short term writer in residence positions at the University of Rome and University of Bologna. Between 1987 and 1993 he toured Europe giving readings and lectures in Italy, Sweden and Finland. Since 1980 Rosenblatt has been living in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island with his wife Faye, a piano teacher, and both have a fondness for felines and gardening, depicted in his paintings and drawings, which are in numerous public and private collections in Canada.

Michel Christensen is a collage artist and “surréaliste manqué”. During his distinguished career in the field of arts and culture, he has served on numerous juries, worked in various capacities for the national museums of Canada, was nominated by the Ottawa City Council to the Mayor’s Committee where he served as both vice-chairperson and chairperson for several terms. He recently curated an exhibition on surrealism, Constellations: Surrealism and Its Affinities. He has also assisted in the realization of several “livres d’artistes”, illustrated with collages the poetry of Andrée Christensen, recipient of the Trillium Prize. Christensen lives and works in Toronto.

“After nearly forty yars of writing and publishing internationally known Canadian writer Joe Rosenblatt knows something about the creative process. And his latest book of poetry, Parrot Fever, and its bilingual edition, Le Perroquet Fâcheux/Parrot Fever Rosenblatt generously shares with us the evolution of this fabulous work, this “surrealist fable.” —Anne Cimon, Books in Canada