Ex Machina by Jonathan Ball

A long poem at the fringes of the Canadian tradition, Ex Machina is a latticework of poetic and philosophical statements concerning the symbiosis of humans, books, and machines. In a series of three intertwining sequences, the reader is encouraged to move back and forth from statement to statement, seeking development but meeting frustration. The reader thus becomes a larval stage in the poem’s development, forging connections between its disparate parts during the course of this mental processing, as the text evolves over multiple readings.

Praise for Ex Machina:

“Ball is one of our most exciting young poets, and Ex Machina is a fresh, daring, original take on the us of us.” —Robert Kroetsch

Jonathan Ball is a writer, filmmaker, scholar, and the former editor of dANDelion. Ex Machina is the first book to which he belongs.