Calgary WORDfest: Benjamin Hertwig - Slow War

DJD Dance Centre, 111 12 Avenue SE, Calgary, AB
View Larger Map ›

Tickets $20 | More details

Benjamin Hertwig (Slow War) will join Dionne Brand, Alice Major, Han Shafi, Michael V. Smith, Katherena Vermette, and Najwa Zebian at the Calgary WORDfest Poetry Cabaret. The event will highlight Canada's great breadth of poetic talent and technique, and is presented in partnership with the League of Canadian Poets.

ABOUT THE COLLECTION

Benjamin Hertwig's debut collection of poetry, Slow War, is at once an account of contemporary warfare and a personal journey of loss and the search for healing. It stands in the tradition of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Kevin Powers' "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting." While his poems inhabit both experimental and traditional forms, Hertwig's breakdown of language channels a descent into violence and an ascent into a future that no longer feels certain, where history and trauma are forever intertwined. This collection reminds us that remembering war is a political act and that writing about war is a way we remember.

Benjamin Hertwig is a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, a painter, and a PhD student at the University of British Columbia whose writing has recently appeared on NPR, in the New York Times, and won a National Magazine Award in 2017.

"Hertwig touches on some of our deepest national myths, only to push in, breaking the veneer of patriotism to reveal something much more potent." CV2

"In this collection, Hertwig remembers, in lyrical detail, moments of violence, fear, and respite. He traces violence from the schoolyard to war, and its aftermath for the soldier. The consequences of the indiscriminate violence of war are made delicate in spite of an uneasiness with making poetry of it." Montreal Review of Books

"Written with searing clarity and massive heart, Slow Waris narrative poetry at its best. Hertwig doesn’t need to proselytize on the mind-rearranging horrors of violence. His brutally-rendered sensory details, the truth, clearly get his point across. When it comes to Canadian war literature, Slow War is the new required reading." Prairie Fire