Bureau of Useless Splendour

“In Bureau of Useless Splendour, Chris Banks is our poetic faith-keeper, soothsayer, interpreter of anxieties and dreams, one of the unacknowledged custodians of our hearts’ lonely and absurd offices.” — Matt Rader, author of Ghosthawk and Fine“Banks’s poethood is defined by a yearning so intense and a capacity for marvelling so palpable, you want to shout camaraderie and praise. And quote endlessly. ‘Here I sit at the Bureau of / Useless Splendour awaiting the day’s invoices,’ he reveals in the collection’s title piece, which, with its complicated verve, its insight, gathers all the collection’s other poems around it in an overall anguished, impassioned paean to life.” — Russell Thornton“A twenty-first century Prospero, Chris Banks throws his books into the sea in Bureau of Useless Splendour, only he doesn’t give up on magic: instead, he rubs words up against each other until he finds new music, new spells on ‘the alphabet’s magical abacus.’” — Jim Johnstone, author of The King of Terrors

Chris Banks is a Pushcart-nominated Canadian poet with eight collections of poems. He has won two national awards, and his poems have appeared across Canada and the United States. Banks runs The Woodlot, a Canadian poetry reviews and essays website. He lives and writes in Kitchener, ON.

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