Ekstasis Editions releases Joyce’s new book Blue Communion

North Carolina poet Nickole Brown has said that our first gods were animals. These “wild gods,” as she calls them, were part of every known aboriginal belief system, helping keep people in balance with the planet. Ekstasis Editions of Victoria has just released Blue Communion, Sean Arthur Joyce’s sixth collection of poetry and his 11^th book overall. The “wild gods” of nature are at the heart of these poems—an attempt to bridge the gap between humans and our wild cousins, to see the world through their eyes.

Roger Lewis, Professor Emeritus of English Literature, Acadia University, writes of Joyce’s poetry: “Joyce has already distinguished himself as a poet of great range, brilliant technique and musical qualities. His poetry is always striking, structured and memorable.”

Blue Communion takes a hard look at humanity and our impact on the creatures with whom we share this planet. The poet’s natural starting point is empathy, imagining the post-climate change world from the perspective not only of bears, hummingbirds, crows and sparrows, but of our less glamorous cousins in nature such as insects. He celebrates the visionaries among us that keep beauty and hope alive—the poets, musicians and other creators—while keeping a vigilant eye on civilization’s corrupt charlatans.

Joyce has previously published five collections of poetry, starting with The Charlatans of Paradise in 2005; and most recently, Diary of a Pandemic Year, inspired by the 18^th century Daniel Defoe classic, A Journal of the Plague Year. A revival of the long-form narrative poem with mythological overtones, Dead Crow and the Spirit Engine spun off a video and touring roadshow, with the complete text published in 2020 as an illustrated limited edition. Four of these collections have gone into two editions.

Joyce published a novel, Mountain Blues, with Edmonton’s NeWest Press in 2018, with one reviewer writing that the novel reminded him of the classic ’90s TV series Northern Exposure. A sequel is in the manuscript editing stage.

In 2022 Joyce published Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age, a collection of essays born of the intersection between classical literature and history and two years of research on the Covid-19 ‘pandemic,’ supported by over 600 references.

The book can be ordered at: www.ekstasiseditions.com