A Current Through the Flesh
Poetry, Family
- Price
- $18.95
A poetry collection that weaves family history into an abrasive cloth, tailored into the full regalia — pre-moth-eaten and torn — of everyday life.
With dry and unflinching humour, Richard-Yves traces traumas back four generations and across families to reveal the flimsiness of male self-images, the perils of silence and the latent power of women oppressed by toxic beliefs.
His poetry surprises and unsettles with haunting images like empty hands that always seem to hold a hammer and sharp knives that are invisible in soapy water. As a spoken word artist, Richard-Yves’ infuses his words with pulse and rhythm creating evocative snapshots: a father as a derelict house, love like the last trip to the vet.
But he tackles the dark side of domestic life with compassion, honesty and a tinge of bewilderment: “Sometimes love / is a thing you catch with bare hands, carefully, / so as not to crush it.
Reviews
“Each poem is Yeats’ jewel box clicking shut, making intimate everything the reader takes for granted in domestic life. Richard-Yves, with measured and effortless concision, reacquaints the reader with the quirks, joys and sorrows that bind family together.” - Rocco de Giacomo, author of Casting Out
“If A Current Through the Flesh doesn’t jolt you, you’d better get someone to take your pulse. Richard-Yves Sitoski has written a barn-burner of a family chronicle, full of pataphysical banquets, low-hanging fireworks, and barehanded catches. This book is haunted and just as often hilarious, underscoring the return of what will not leave easily.” - Tanis MacDonald, author of Mobile: poems
“A provocative piece of work, blood spinning around the brain, heart doing acrobatics, soul offering us all sorts of highwire flash. Read Current for its mythological fireworks, delicious creepiness and outlandish grasp of imagery standing on its head.” - Barry Dempster, author of Late Style
Book Details
Pub Date: September 2025
Trade Paperback
84 pages
Print ISBN 9781553807360
E-book ISBN 9781553807353
6” x 9”
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