Andy McGuire

Country Club

Andy McGuire

McGuire's father is the current president of Monsanto Canada. Though the work isn't strictly autobiographical, he uses the blurring of the personal and corporate as a springboard for his poetic themes and obsessions. As he said, « Being a wall-fly in the Oval Office of global food production, offspring of a corporate exec, was not the impetus of Country Club, it is a weather pattern of the unique climate the collection has been born into.» This isn't straight ecopoetry, but the poet's connection to one of the most reviled companies on Earth could help the book find a substantial reach outside the usual spheres of poetry readership in Canada and the US: environmentalists, anti-GMO activists, food scientists, policy analysts etc.Many of the poems in this collection were written while McGuire was living in his father's house in southwest Florida, where he found an affinity with the Sunshine State: «I embraced my consumer capitalist heritage. Saluted palm trees. Kept the driveway swept. Surrendered to the unflinching positivity of the neighbours.»