100 years on from the Winnipeg General Strike, and where are we? Same super-rich greed and oppression tactics, same massive poverty and pandemic illness. Permanent Carnival Time stirs us to see clearly the deluge of claptrap that passes for public discourse in neoliberal capitalism. A superb word-crafter with a sharp ear for rhythm, Smith makes us rage against callous injustices, while we laugh out loud with his urgent, compelling, heartfelt poetry. --Meredith Quartermain, author of Lullabies in the Real World If these snarling poems don?t topple your jolly-trolley, get out and strike--harder and higher! Between the lines of this searing bone-on-anvil Smithery-on-fire is a bottom-up demand for dire irreverent revolt. Saucy as Chaucer, ornery as Diogenes, nasty as Nietzsche, ballsy as Bataille,Permanent Carnival Time?s punchline/breaks crackle-cackle with seismic humbling, rumble-crumble force. Seek shelter, grab tight to something solid, and read with your PPE on, this book is bound to explode in your hands! I triple-dog dare you, to open with care.? --Ted Landrum, maker of Midway Radicals & Archi-Poems Smith?s latest Rabelaisian screed accepts the high stakes of its moment and sets its author to work, painstakingly fact-checking Empire, peeling at the truth-y slough atop a rotting system. Herein the poet names names, spits statistics with sadistic wistfulness, and cackles as he kicks against the pricks.

This is a writing where anything goes, because everything matters; and like the killer mixtape that Smith?s sequencing slyly implies, reminds us that another word for 'dissonant' is 'bittersweet.' --Cam Scott, author of ROMANS/SNOWMARE.