Carmine Starnino's poems have won the Canadian Authors Associate Prize, the A.M. Klein Prize and the F.G. Bressani Prize. He is the author of A Lover's Quarrel, a collection of essays on Canadian poetry, and the editor of The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry. He lives in Montreal, where he works as an associate editor for Maisonneuve magazine. His most recent poetry collection is This Way Out (Gaspereau, 2009)

Carmine's latest collection of poems is full of lyrical escapes, exits and embarkations that set out to measure degrees of belonging and proximity to being at home. With his close attention to sound and ease of comparison, Starnino tries on voices and costumes for size, revisiting his childhood stomping grounds and current neighbourhood bars, reliving teenage haircuts and marvelling at the skill of the local butcher. Counterbalancing his own search for place, Starnino delights in locating in other people and favourite objects their aptitude for simply being themselves.