FAKE MATH: poems

Moments are the elements of profit. - Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1

Composed primarily through the co-optation and recombination of internet search results, FAKE MATH is a poetic intervention into the ways the motive for profit structures our lives. Each poem exposes the fallacies, fake logics, and sheer idiocies that constrict our decision-making processes in terms of our art, industry, educational system, and our day-to-day lives, while questioning our tendency to resort to institutionalized social violence. FAKE MATH draws its inspiration from diverse sources from Marx to Freud, from Archimedes to Oprah, sending them all downstream on rapidly pulsating waves of schizophrenic glee and political gravity, often creating startling juxtapositions when mismatched ideas and images are torn from their original contexts. The effects are at once humorous and stomach-churning. Ultimately, these are poems about how we live, work, and play within larger structures of capitalism and how our attempts to move past these structures are largely failed attempts at rebellion, not real attempts at revolution or, better yet, escape.

Born and raised in Calgary, ryan fitzpatrick is a founding editor of (orange) magazine and a past editor and board member of filling Station magazine. His poetry has been published across Canada, most notably the anthologies Post-Prairie (2005, Talonbooks, Eds. Robert Kroetsch and Jon Paul Fiorentino) and Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry (2005, Mercury Press, Eds. derek beaulieu, Jason Christie, and a. rawlings). FAKE MATH is his first full-length collection of poems.