Decline of the Animal Kingdom

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Decline of the Animal Kingdom investigates modern constructs of domesticity, freedom, wilderness, and artificiality to paint a portrait of what it means to be human, animal, or both in a society saturated with dog boutiques, trophy hunting, retro taxidermy, and eco-tourism. With brief forays into Algonquin Park and the heart of the 1980s jungle, the book largely draws its energy from the urban landscape, where the animals that interact with the environment have permanent effects on the land and human psyche. A wild deer wanders into the downtown core; the Galapagos and the ethics of conservation invade our Xbox; a mule grows weary of his unrewarding office job and unfulfilling relationships. Exploring the victories and defeats of an urban existence complete with 9-to-5 office angst, the claustrophobia of domestic partnerships in bachelor apartments, and party-and-pick-up culture, Decline of the Animal Kingdom is Laura Clarke’s love letter to the city of Toronto, and to extinct animals and office misfits alike.

Included on  National Post’s 99 Best Books of 2015 & Globe and Mail’s 100 Best Books 0f 2015

Shortlisted for the 2015 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry

“Clarke’s mischievous, fabulist debut collection blurs the lines between the literal and allegorical as she employs a lens of anthropomorphism, an edge of misanthropy, and the slow unravelling of personae into disparate states evoking something between grace and madness. The stark, spare language of her poetry, which utilizes a variety of forms, belies its complexity . . . Clarke’s successful balancing of calculated loathing and euphoria makes for a fierce piece of performance art.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

 

Equal parts love letter, death threat, elegy, and inter-office memo, Laura Clarke’s lush, zoological debut recalls us to the feral darkness at the heart of our daily transactional order, as we stream, google, multi-task, and “live-tweet (our) way to extinction.” At times comically direct, at others torqued by the pressure of spiraling syntax, her language bristles throughout with an ardent intimacy laced with dread. “I don’t eat meat,” confides the speaker of this snarling twenty-first century bestiary, “but I love to wear it / and wrap it around blue cheese for shark fishing at dawn.” — Suzanne Buffam

 

“The poems in Clarke’s debut collection appear deceptively simple at first glance, with the pop sheen of YouTube videos and movie reviews, but are in fact nuanced examinations of the relationships between people and animals, domesticity and the wild.” — National Post, as part of National Post’s 99 Best Books of 2015

 

“Decline of the Animal Kingdom is Laura Clarke’s debut but it comes with fangs fully bared, claws out and a hungry raptor’s dark and fearless heart.” — Today’s Book of Poetry

 

“Clarke has produced a truly impressive and startling debut collection, dense and elegant, which approaches the animal kingdom in an unconventional manner.” — Winnipeg Free Press