The Relativistic Empire

An obsessive perfectionist, Samuel Andreyev inhabits several worlds: he writes in English while living in France; he is an internationally known composer, performer, and teacher; and he is an experimental poet who documents words, phrases, and rhetorical devices, while staying true to the fundamental tools of classical poetry.

The Relativistic Empire, Andreyev’s second poetry collection, combines the brevity and lightness of a comic strip with the complexity and richness of French symbolist poetry. Spare, yet rich with meaning; suggesting narrative, while forcefully pushing away from it--these poems strive for an edgy involvement with the world and language. Only a poet straddling borders of sound and sense could achieve this.

Readers familiar with the poetry of Tom Raworth, Trevor Joyce, or Rae Armantrout, will delight in Andreyev’s intense work.

Praise for The Relativistic Empire:

"The Relativistic Empire is a carnival of specific instructions. Andreyev’s declensions describe absurd reality. Humour takes the poems on all the rides, from ’real’ to ’false’ in all their mirrors." --Alice Burdick, author ofHoller

"The Relativistic Empire shows the exquisite in the everyday; the slips of the tongue which sharpens the pencil’s point until it bleeds. Our things--and the names we give them--slide from strange to stranger, from contained to container. Whistling the orchestration of a beautiful "teflon ballet," Andreyev makes the poem march to clockwork and despair." --Derek Beaulieu, Calgary’s Poet Laureate