Lewis Carrol meets Allen Ginsberg.... This is poetry about an angel-poet, wings paper-clipped, seeking spiritual food in the modern office cubicle. He pecks away at office-machinery (‡ la Dilbert) and dreams among his fellow stick men and women of being a Wordsworthian visionary ó or at least an ìaction figureenî. Jason Camlot is a scholar of Victorian nonsense and humorous verse and these poems are a ëhowlí amidst the ìslithy borogrovesî sort of affair, a wild, brilliantly refitted variety theater act. Other pieces, equally wan, hilarious, noir, plumb nineteen thirties Hollywood (and present day movieland) hijinks, Hemingwayís war-with-booze style, and the dark obsessions of Important Men. The writer and his writing is ëpastí conscious, but completely versed in contemporary Canadian and American poetry. This is an immensely funny, witty, up-to-date collection ó zany, zippy, and zine-y! Critical Comment ìThe book is deceptively easy to read and packed with pop-cultural references, while skillfully skipping between an array of styles and personae.îó McGill Tribune, Jan. 2006ìJason Camlot packs a lot into the 100-plus pages of Attention All Typewriters. His wit and erudition are everywhere apparent.îó Montreal Review of Books, Spring/Summer 2006 ìPlaying with the form and, throughout this collection, with ideas about the real work of the poet, Camlot is finding and admitting and contemplating and celebrating his office upon earth.îó Broken Pencil, #30 ìJason Camlotís new book is an enigmatic and funny tour de force. Riding the board of high culture, it surfs the waves of pop that break relentlessly over our lives and emerges tangled in seaweed and garbage, soaked, but still standing.îó david antin ìJason Camlot finds poetry in the most unlikely places: in hilarious stoned college dorm memories, the boredom of ëmeaninglessí office jobs, a rhymed litany of frequented drinking haunts, or a confessional meditation on warmongering America. I applaud these poems for their slightly jaded integrity, for their formal astuteness and wit, for their engagement with a not-so-desirable reality. Camlot valiantly fights the good fight: against conformity and numbness, against that which excludes poetry from daily life.î ó David Trinidad
