Transmitter and Receiver

by Raoul Fernandes

Debut talent Raoul Fernandes's first offering is Transmitter and Receiver, a masterful and carefully depicted exploration of one's relationships with oneself, friends, memories, strangers and technology.The three parts of this collection are variations building on a theme--at times lonely, sometimes adoring, but always honest. Wider areas of contemplation--the difficulty of communication, the ever-changing symbolism of language and the nature of human interaction in the age of machines--are explored through colloquial scenes of the everyday: someone eats a burger in a car parked by the river ("Grand Theft Auto: Dead Pixels"), a song plays on the radio as a man contemplates suicide ("Car Game"), and a janitor works silently once everyone else has gone ("After Hours at the Centre For Dialogue").Forthright and effortlessly lyrical, Fernandes builds each poem out of candor and insight, an addictive mix that reads like a favourite story and glitters with concealed meaning. Rather than drawing lines between isolation and connection, past and present, metaphor and reality, Transmitter and Receiver offers loneliness and longing hand-in-hand with affection and understanding: "The last assembly instruction is always you reading this. A machine / that rarely functions, but could never without you."

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2015

About the author

Raoul Fernandes lives and writes in Vancouver, BC. He completed the Writer’s Studio at SFU in 2009 and was a finalist for the 2010 Bronwen Wallace Award for emerging writers and a runner up in subTerrain’s Lush Triumphant Awards in 2013. He has been published in numerous literary journals and is an editor for the online poetry magazine The Maynard. His first collection of poems, “Transmitter and Receiver” Nightwood Editions, 2015.

Reviews

[maia · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book of local Canadian poetry! I really enjoyed the author’s use of language and imagery to capture specific moments and feelings and spaces in time. I don’t often read poetry and this inspired me to read more! I did an initial read through and look forward to coming back to these pieces. Definitely would recommend 😊

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this after reading some of the author's poems in a Canadian poetry anthology. These poems are reflective and nostalgic with a sense of wonder and hope throughout. I loved Midnight Skirt and Signal and Noise. Really enjoyed this book!

[Cipriyani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every poem in this book is like a soft and quiet comforter / When I read this author's poetry, I start to treat the world more gently, and I feel like the world considers being more gentle with me

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devoured this collection of poems today, catching myself holding my breath for minutes at a time. I couldn't put this book down and I still don't think I'm done.

I was going to try and collect a small list of poems that affected me the most, but realized that I practically dogeared the entire book. If I had to pick one poem though "Affordable travel through time" nearly killed me. And maybe has.

This collection is overwhelming, charming and full of fun and love. Please read it. And thank you so much Raoul Fernandes.

[Cassandra Reads & Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a marvellous first collection from a great young voice in Canadian poetry. My first exposure to this work came in a park, in the summer, with sunshine and community surrounding me. After which experience, I decided I must read this book. I am a firm and committed believer in the page as a necessary function of poetics. A poem exists on the page, not only in the reading of it but in the play of lines, the secret nuances that are only fully graspable when the reader and the poem interact privately. There are, of course, exceptions, and readings are often exceptional, but I still prefer to develop my own relationship to the poem and the page.

In my private communion I was happily unsurprised that the power of the work was just as present. A poetics of machinery and communication, disruption. Frequencies both literal and figurative that life, narrative, and family operate on and within. There is a sense of movement and connection, technology and people. People impacted by, and at times, indecipherable from the machinery that IS modern life. The poems confront notions of equation and interpersonal relationships, of assigning value to the intangible.

All in all a lovely first collection, a poet I will be watching, and a hearty recommendation to read!

[Gwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of sometimes beautiful, sometimes ponderous, sometimes painful, sometimes playful poems. I love the imagery and evocations.

[Sara Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. This is a book I wanted to devour in one sitting, but every poem in it left me reeling. After each piece I found myself having to put the book down to thoroughly digest what I had just read. Raoul Fernandes writes poetry that is modern, accessible, and fresh. This is the type of poetry that even non-poets can love, but Fernandes has put enough technical skill into these works that the poets can learn something from it too. His is a voice that will ring through your head long after the last line has been read.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't been so moved by a book of poetry in years. This guy is the real deal.