The Toronto subway system functions like a mirror, you see what you want to see; sometimes acts of inexpressible kindness and beauty, and often just that cold paralyzing indifference that exists between strangers. Ensconced in the hard physicality of the Toronto subway system, its mechanisms and those elements of humanity that occasionally peer out from behind the Metro, The SubWay illustrates the history of the TTC and the parallel impact it has on those riding it. The SubWay examines an underground that in many ways performs as the central nervous system to the city of Toronto. Blending both lyric poetry and found text, readers enter Quinn’s SubWay, and between stops and starts, effectively see their own subterranean selves.

Philip Quinn lives in Toronto. His poetry has appeared in Inkstone, Rampike, sub-Terrain, Cabaret Vert, Snow Monkey and Anemone Sidecar. His short fiction has appeared in Quarry, blood + aphorisms, Front & Centre, Canadian Fiction magazine, Kiss Machine, Broken Pencil and Lichen journal. In 2000, a collection of short fiction entitled Dis Location, Stories After the Flood was published by Gutter Press. The Double, a novel, was published by Gutter in 2003. Quinns journalism has appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, National Post and the Toronto Star. The SubWay is his first collection of poetry.

108 pages; 6x9 inches; paperback
ISBN 1 897388 27 6 | 978 1 897388 27 3
Fall 2008
Poetry