From Out of Nowhere was published by Turnstone Press in April 2009. It is a long poem about growing up in Winnipeg and being from the prairies. As written on the back cover:
“From Out of Nowhere explores how cities have changed the landscape for prairie poetry. The poems find the intersections where nature speaks through cowboys, hunters, fishers, farmers, and businessmen. These voices are captured in cityscapes where they mutate, harmonize, and resonate to give new meaning to old turns of phrase, calls to action, and directions home.
In the end, From Out of Nowhere reveals that it is in our green spaces where we are reminded of our past, our present, and our uncertain future, and how we find ourselves, and our spirit, somewhere between city and country.”
Click here to read a sample of From Out of Nowhere
From Out of Nowhere was launched in a festive fashion on April 28th, 2009 at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg. Video of my presentation is coming soon . . .
To purchase a signed copy of From Out of Nowhere for $17 please e-mail john@johntoone.ca. On-line store coming soon . . .
“John Toone is in the midst of perfecting the prairie roar, the long poem of multiple perspectives and precise insights. There are echoes of Cooley, Hunter, and Kroetsch in these pages. From Out of Nowhere is a relentless and exhilarating text.”
- Jon Paul Fiorentino, stripmalling
“From Out of Nowhere is poetry written against paperwork and the banal language of bureaucracy and control. John Toone’s phrases slip out of the rut of conventional meaning through surprising turns. This book brooks no lazy readers: instead, it fights for a fresh engagement with words and the ideas they carry.”
Sixgun Quixote was published by Alchemical Press in October 2009 and is distributed in the United States by Bluewater Productions.
Sixgun Quixote is a graphic novel (as in bloody) about the last stand of a delusional cowboy. It explores the life of an outsider and the long road home. Sixgun Quixote combines prose and art by GMB Chomichuk, poems and hand-lettering by John Toone to assault the senses with a dark prairie beauty and visions of a grave future.
Sixgun Quixote was launched in spectacular fashion on October 31st and November 1st at the Central Canada Comic Con in Winnipeg.
“Sixgun Quixote is a strange and unusual publication - a dream of a western cowboy – running amok in the vivid imagination and mind of a big city homeless man”
- Ben T. Traywick,
Author and Official Town Historian of Tombstone, AZ
“The cowboy poems as told by Sixgun Quixote is like an audio track on paper, reads like music, antic and dark, wholly evocative of Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic masterpiece, The Road, the boys lull you into the dusty, outlaw world of gunslinger and the shoot the shit out of you when they drag you back home. Again with the themes of apocalypse, death and the isolation of the lonely, nasty hero, words and pictures move sensuously, texturally in unison with the absence of hope. This time it’s not fear as beauty, but hopelessness as nostalgia. Sweet.”
- Susie Moloney, The Dwelling
Sixgun Quixote is included in The Imagination Manifesto: Book One, a hardcover that contains four serialized graphic novels that challenge the impossible and reveal the world written between the lines.
Click here to read a sample of The Imagination Manifesto: Book One
To purchase a signed copy of The Imagination Manifesto: Book One for $20 please e-mail john@johntoone.ca. On-line store coming soon . . .
Shot in the Woods is a dark comedy inspired by the true story of when I was shot in the woods. No joke. These poems attempt to solve the mysteries of that day as they explore how stories spread and mutate in the small town of Winnipeg.
The Lake reflects on cottage country and life at the water’s edge. Against the backdrop of Falcon Lake, these poems reveal the stuff of family and friends, wilderness escapes, and endless summers.
Woodlot chronicles the clearing of land and planting of trees on a quarter-section of forest near Prawda, MB. This is about getting back to the land and building a home.
Shot in the Woods, The Lake, and Woodlot will come together in some form or another, my next manuscript maybe . . .
