Instructor and MVS Alumnus Joshua Thorpe (MVS 2009) recently released a book titled The Unexpected with Emily Smit-Dicks. The book was published by the Swimmers Group, a Toronto-based, international, cross-disciplinary, art and literature publication studio.

From the Swimmers Group publication release:

“By turns humorous and delicate, nostalgic and blunt, The Unexpected turns away from the clamour of current affairs to tell a story of love in a hundred pages of slowly unfolding scenes in melancholy and joy.

Somewhere between flash fiction, poetry, and picture book, The Unexpected is short and descriptive, rhythmic and melodic, and visits topics as diverse as rain and wind, sumac and pine… and birds that ‘make dirt on men and women’s heads.’

The images, some quickly scrawled in ink, others more carefully daubed in wash, show us foxes, feet, and streetlights at night. Scenes, it almost seems, from some storyboard of dreams, dreamt at the edge of sleep.“

This is not the duo’s first project together. Last year Thorpe and Smit-Dicks created an installment for the Howard Park Institute located in Toronto. For the month of February, their poem was displayed on the “Howard Park Institute Window”.

The Unexpected officially launches Thursday, March 10 at the G Gallery in Toronto. Visitors should enter on Foxley Pl., just north of Argyle Street. The event runs from 7 pm to 9 pm. There will be a $15 cover charge.