It Is What It Is, What Is It

by Spencer Butt

Here's some poems for when you're confused or pretending you're not. Poems for when you want to laugh or cry or laugh until you cry or cry until you laugh. Poems for when you're fine or "fine" or when you yell FINE and walk away. Here's some poems for you to come back to and some poems you can take with you. Poems about life and ghouls and parenting and love and regret and freaking out. Here's some poems with question marks and exclamation points. Poems about a long time ago and tomorrow and the sci-fi future. Poems to turn shrugs into hugs and vice versa. Here's some poems to just sit back and enjoy the ride with, but please keep your hands and feet inside the book at all times.

86 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2023

About the author

Spencer Butt is a veteran performance poet, and has featured at events like The Art Gallery of Ontario's First Thursdays, The Royal Ontario Museum's Friday Night Live, Word on the Street, and Long Winter Toronto. His first collection Slouching the Dream was published in 2016, and his poems have recently appeared in publications like Poetry is Dead and Filling Station. Outside of the poetry world he's a dad, a nerd, and writes for a tech company, three things that help keep his writing simple, keep the pop culture references flowing, and make connections as fast as possible. He lives and works in Toronto.

Reviews

[Phi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I've made it all the way through a Poetry Collection. But this one got me.

Something in the meandering specificity of the images and ideas that really spoke to me. I think these kinds of very specific but "mundane" images really cut to the emotional experience of being a person.

I especially loved the frank nature with which Spencer Butt describes living w mental illness or just the psychological burden of being alive.

And a wonderful sense of humour suffused throughout the writing as well. Both in the haha sense but also in the way that humour is the attitude with which we get through the day.

Excellent work.