Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe

McCann’s latest collection is all killer, no filler

Half wisecracking tour guide and half flirtatious trick, the poems in Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe examine how we respond to overwork, anxiety, and overstimulation. McCann’s third collection speaks to a world that is too busy and too anxious, delivering the material with zero reverence and with loads of self-deprecating, disarming, observational—and sometimes catty—humour. Inviting readers to be his “bandmates / on life’s slutty bus tour,” Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe marks a fresh new direction in Marcus McCann’s poetics.

Marcus McCann is the author of three collections of poetry. His work has been awarded the EJ Pratt Medal and John Newlove Award, and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Born in Hamilton, McCann lives in Toronto and is a part owner of Toronto’s Glad Day Bookshop. Learn more at marcusmccann.com.

“Swaying flirtatiously between themes of aging, apology, self-awareness, and sex, poet Marcus McCann’s tight, percussive compositions – which are best read aloud, slowly, and with someone listening – are a reminder of why intimacy, along with all its attendant disappointments, is still worth striving for.” — Quill & Quire‘s 2017 Books of the Year reviewers’ picks

“The poems that make up Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe are, one might say, an incredible mouthful: smart and sassy, thoughtful and wise, thick with swagger, impulse and a great deal more experience than his prior two collections.” — rob mclennan

“Marcus’ poetry collects the anxieties built from a combination of interactions within the city, between people, and with oneself. We are asked to slow our pace a heartbeat and observe those interactions. Document the anxieties. Laugh at them a little. Marcus guides us through a Toronto where the calm exists within the chaos, and we are only a car wreck away from finding it.” — Broken Pencil

“Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe offers wry commentary on the modern world’s miniature nightmares.” — Winnipeg Free Press

“McCann’s work is a must for any lover of poems.” — Northumberland Today

“Not a syllable is wasted; rather than teach an austerity of pleasure, it encourages luxuriating and loitering in the back alleys of his poems.” – Daniel Allen Cox on The Hard Return

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