The Nonnets by Aaron Giovannone

Compulsively confessional and cracking wise, The Nonnets is an utterly unique alchemy of poetry and comedy.

Aaron Giovannone’s latest collection is a book-length sequence of “nonnets”—nine-line poems that Giovannone handles with ruthless dexterity. Capturing transformations from first dates to goodbye texts, from mama’s boy to unrepentant shoplifter, from post-industrial downtown to eleventh-century Italian monastery, these poems present a kaleidoscopic world that careens wildly between despair and ecstasy.

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Praise for The Nonnets:

“Often hilarious, always poignant, Aaron Giovannone’s The Nonnets scoop up handfuls of life and buoy them into air. These poems are to the heart as angel food cake is to the mouth.” —Larissa Lai, author of When Fox is a Thousand and Automaton Biographies

“With the poetic dexterity of a maestro, Aaron Giovannone’s The Nonnets takes us on a hilarious and unpredictable journey. If these amazing poems don’t make you think about how wondrous and doomed we are, if they don’t make you laugh and cry, then you are dead inside.” —Adam Dickinson, author of The Polymers, finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry

“There’s a marvellousness in every single one of Aaron Giovannone’s magic nonnets: exquisite, surprising, crystalline bursts of light. The Nonnets is a book of the marvellous—its beauty and intelligence astound me.” —Jake Kennedy, winner of the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and author of Apollinaire’s Speech to the War Medic and Merz Structure No. 2 Burnt by Children at Play

Press Coverage:

Most Anticipated: Our 2018 Spring Poetry Preview —49th Shelf

The Nonnets Author Aaron Giovannone Reviews His Recent Writing Spaces —Open Book

“Giovannone’s poems seems effortless and easy, masterfully polished to a shine without losing their edge.” —Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press

Un Momento with Aaron Giovannone —ItaloCanadese

“Giovannone’s work is also quietly innovative… The steady sweep of miniature triptychs variously creates syllogisms; shifts the sense of a word or idea; transitions from a lyric treatment of a theme to a discussion of said treatment to addressing a reader; or just tumbles in picaresque disjunction… Giovannone is also just really funny” —Carl Watts, Canadian Literature

Aaron Giovannone’s poems have been published widely in journals across Canada and the US, and his nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Walrus, Brick, and Vice. Originally from St. Catharines, Ontario, Aaron has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary and has lived in Italy, including a year as a visiting scholar at the University of Siena. He is the author of a previous collection of poetry titled The Loneliness Machine. Aaron splits his time between Calgary and the Okanagan Valley, where he teaches literature and writing at Okanagan College.