Asa Boxer’s first book, The Mechanical Bird (Véhicule, 78 pp.) investigates lies and truth, authenticity and artifice, and the play between these binaries that the wily metallic songster of the book’s title suggests. Véhicule’s website says that the book opens with a “quick talking disquisition on lying” that Boxer laughingly admits is a lie: “It actually doesn’t! That was written before we rearranged it. That was a lie! The lies were moved to a further section on in the book.”

Despite this play, Boxer takes a fairly traditional stance on the relationship between poetry and lying. “In terms of lying, the thing is, there’s a big difference between lying and poetry in the sense that I think the best poetry actually works in the reverse direction. Where lies try to obscure the truth, I think poetry is best when it’s pulling back the veil and revealing truth. So even if you’re writing about lies you’re writing — you know, I’ve written largely in a comic way for the most part — about how lies work, about how one tells a lie and one gets away with it.”

Boxer is visiting Alberta to receive the Canadian Author’s Association (CAA) National Literary Award for poetry for The Mechanical Bird. The CAA also established the Governor General’s Awards back in the 1930s (now given out by the Canada Council). The National Literary Awards are unique for honouring writing that achieves excellence without sacrificing popular appeal. Boxer seems an obvious choice for the winner. During his fairly lengthy writing process — during which each poem typically goes through 40 to 50 versions — he requests feedback from a range of people, some with an academic background in literature and, notably, some without. He explains that he aims to write poetry “that’s as accessible as can be without giving up entirely on people’s intelligence.”

“People are important to me, audiences are important to me,” he says. “One of the key things that I think happened to me over the years, in coming to be [a poet], is wanting to not express myself — which happens anyways — but to express, to sort of try to understand, others. I found that by thinking that way or by approaching poetry that way, I was able to get at something I couldn’t beforehand.” In The Mechanical Bird, the people Boxer attempts to understand and express are creators and artisans, such as a clockmaker or a workman in his workshop (“The Workshop” is a poem cycle that won the first prize in the CBC/enRoute poetry competition).

Boxer explains that the workshop “became this sort of metaphysical thing where the human being, in essence, is a god.” Boxer’s poetic project is layered by the fact that in creating these characters or voices, the poet, too, plays a sort of god, and moreover, in imitating their voices, the poet becomes his eponymous character, the mechanical bird.

Boxer reads from The Mechanical Bird on Thursday, July 3 at 7 p.m. at Pages Books on Kensington (1135 Kensington Rd. N.W.) for the flywheel reading series. He will be joined by local writers Leif Baradoy and Dominique Fraissard.

In honour of The Calgary Stampede, renowned local author, historian and professor Max Foran is giving an encore presentation of his popular lecture, The History of the Calgary Stampede. His presentation takes place on Friday, June 27 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the fourth Floor North Meeting Room at the W.R. Castell Central Library (616 Macleod Trail S.E.). You can register to attend online or by calling 403-260-2620.