Indie Rock candidly focuses on a queer poet/musician’s life in Newfoundland and his personal struggles with addiction, OCD, and trauma. This intelligent and punchy collection is steeped in musicality and the geographies and cadences of Newfoundland. With an astute attention to form, rhythm, and aesthetics, Joe Bishop tells an honest and contemporary coming-of-age story about an artist alienated from, but fascinated by, the world he inhabits. Readers dealing with grief and living through recovery will find solace in these poems, as will those conflicted by faith, curious about the rigid confines of masculinity, or yearning to hear a voice like theirs in verse. At its core, Indie Rock is about keeping records, an artist’s compulsion to make art, and the power of love and imagination to overcome death.
I
Patrick Street on St. Paddy’s Day
Live at The Battery
Carpentry
Devil-Ma-Click
After a Three-Month Friendship
After Our AA Meeting
Quitting
Conception Bay Woman
Don’t Worry About Me, Mike
II
Parade Street Duo (April Fools)
Time-Lapse (First Sleepover)
Medley for My Banshee
Barely Audible Lament
Lowdown, Lowdown
We Idled at the Ship
Boxing Day (Cabin Fever)
Ash Wednesday
III
Remembrance Day
Canada Day Pyro
Yankee Boys of Argentia
Dance Song
Farm Museum Fundraiser
Heave-Up Song
Dirty Newfoundlanders
Evening on Livingstone Street
Gary
Laps at the University Pool
Gooseberry Cove
Jinker
Root Cellar Blues
Young Feller’s Tale
Little Sea-Song
IV
Overture
Saltbox
Digger
Arty Relative
Enlightened Poets
dissociative song
Outsider Art
Celluloid Tango
Danny Boy
I Believe He Would Believe Me Not Completely
V
Victoria Day in Heart’s Delight
Touching Lines
Father’s Day
Inherited Thumbnail
Nuclear Runoff
Off Season Pitch
Release
Pinnacle Or
scrupulous music
East Coast Trail, Midnight
Notes
Acknowledgements
