Bothism is an experimental Sufi text. It is both sorrow and joy, day and night, content and form, dot and circle, the threshold between worlds. It moves from unity to multiplicity and back again exploring that which can be split and reunited: a cell, a relationship, society, faith, time, words on the page. It posits that if one thing is true, then the opposite must also true, and when asked to choose, the poet’s answer is always both.

Bothism both contains and liberates a play of opposites. It applies various techniques to its cause: constraint-based short fiction, concrete poems in which language experiences the Big Bang, undergoes mitosis, or undertakes a lettrist occupation of the moon. It overflows with ecstatic lyric verse as it beautifully depletes its conceit. In Bothism, all things miraculously reveal that they contain their opposites: Revulsion cedes to attraction, contradiction celebrates confirmation, and bondage embraces freedom.
~ Kaie Kellough

Bothism by Tanya Evanson is a collection of poems and it is a long koan. It is the butterfly and the bee, the float and the sting, and a re-arrangment of the terms of our binaries. As she so brilliantly puts it, this ‘road leads the way to itself.’ Open this book and your road of reading will lead you to the ineffable voice of Tanya Evanson.
~ Wayde Compton

Tanya Evanson is an Antiguan-Canadian writer and performer from Tio'tia:ke/Montreal. She is a graduate of Concordia University Creative Writing and program director of Banff Centre Spoken Word. Evanson has released four audio recordings including ZENSHIP (2016) and recent spoken word performances include Suoni per il Popolo, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Tasmanian Poetry Festival, Edinburgh Book Festival and Glastonbury Festival. Her second book of poetry Nouveau Griot is forthcoming from Frontenac House in 2018 and recent publications include WSQ (Feminist Press), 40 Years of Room Magazine (Caitlin Press), Resist Much / Obey Little (Dispatches Edition) and Where the Nights Are Twice as Long (Goose Lane). Evanson is a past recipient of the Golden Beret Award and was Poet of Honour at the 2013 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. She moonlights as a whirling dervish.