Wrong Number - by Katrin Talbot (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

WRONG NUMBER explores how wrong numbers, telephone and other, can be worlds unto themselves and these poems reflect experiences that can redirect a life or simply add colour to a day. Getting on the wrong bus, prank calls, double-death fossils, the alarm of wrong mother calls from the school, the friend with a number one off from the Chicago FBI tip line-these are all fodder for unexpected journeys. Consequences of our distracted thoughts or our careless fingers' antics can pave or dial the way to a simple much-needed laugh, a bit of a shock, or, sometimes, unexpected joy.

Review Quotes

To read Katrin Talbot's poetry is to be startled out of your mundane thought patterns, to be lead into surprising and strange poetic delights. Whether writing of heartbreaks and poultry, grade school pranks and sugar ants, or airplane seats for cellos, Katrin gifts the reader with the wild prairie of language. She is so at home in the world of mystery and whimsy. She will open your eyes and astonish you.

-Andrea Potos, author of Marrow of Summer & Mothershell

Wrong Number is a telling title for Katrin Talbot's latest collection. For each poem etches a keen, layered moment of misconnection, miscue, misreading, mishap. Yet through these tangles of trouble runs a palpable current of delight, a sense that despite the myriad miscarriages, connections can be made. The tone is set in the first poem where, regarding the mis-delivery of a "squawking" bouquet of mixed flowers, "someone had / heard wrong / written wrong / typed wrong... so the arrangement landed / at the wrong house / placed in front of the / right painting / reported and / now singing." Wrong Number is a smart and heartfelt charmer.

-Mark Belair, author of Stonehaven