Jaspreet Singh’s “Dreams of the Epoch & the Rock”: A Book Launch and Readings

In Dreams of the Epoch & the Rock, Singh deepens his exploration of climate, language, migration, decolonization and the Anthropocene with an energy both acrobatic and intimate. Interweaving the personal, local, global and geologic with hidden histories, these poems invite possibilities and defy neat closures, leaving readers with an indelible view of deep time. An ancestor’s words in a diary, a child’s chalk drawing, solar panels that smile like an ancient god, the Great Oxygenation Event: the gaze of these poems is vast, eclectic and awestruck, while also remaining clear-eyed about the futures that await our planet.

“I love everything about it.” — Forrest Gander

“This book speaks to/for so many.” — Daphne Marlatt

“A eureka moment in the lifelong experiment.” —Nick Thran

“These poems spark an inexplicable sensation.” —Kim Nekarda

“Singh is a poet of light.” — Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Jaspreet Singh is the author of acclaimed poetry collections, non-fiction, novels, short stories, and a memoir. More and more his work engages with deep time and the ecological crisis.

He began writing short pieces in the late 1990s and eventually chose to be a full-time writer rather than pursue a career as a research scientist. Since that time, he has published eight books—non-fiction, fiction, poetry. Increasingly these days his creative writing work engages with the new epoch, the Anthropocene. The concept of the Anthropocene (even when described informally) challenges the strange modern separation between “nature” and “humanity,” destabilizes our human-centric maps and our sense of time, and creates new forms of affect and thought; it calls for an integration of diverse disciplines to address the climate crisis and interspecies relationships, and to further the project of decolonization. All his books published after 2019—non-fiction and fiction—are an earnest attempt in this direction.

Helium (2013) and Chef (2008)—his earlier novels—were published internationally by Bloomsbury and received both popular and critical acclaim. Chef explored the damaged landscapes of Kashmir. It was a finalist for a Commonwealth Writers’ prize and won the Georges Bugnet Award. Helium investigated genocidal violence and was a 2013 Observer Best Book of the Year in the UK. The Globe and Mail called it a “tour de force” and the Financial Times described it as a “powerful meditation on historical forgetting.” My Mother, My Translator—his 2021 memoir—has been called an “indispensable, inimitable” book “that reshapes memoir.” It was a finalist for the Betsy Warland Between Genres Award, and the recipient of the 2022 City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. His newest collection of poems “Dreams of the Epoch & the Rock” was published in Canada in November 2024.

Jaspreet will be in residence at Green College for four months beginning in January 2025.