Where does the fragile, robust self reside when 'personal' voice is sent out online into an ironic masquerade ball of alias identity and wanton proxy? What stirs us? Can there be anything authentic about feeling anything anymore?
In "What Stirs," Margaret Christakos looks at our primal appetite for attachment through the modern norms of codependency and co-existence, understanding that the postmodern digital era has created an atmosphere where the vulnerability and tenderness of the individual is both profanely exposed and brazenly reinvented in the arrival of virtual identity. Often playful but never trifling, Christakos's work layers the ecstatic possibilities of lyric poetry, the mundane and intimate extremes of motherhood, and her continued curiosity with experimental poetics in a thoughtful collection of sensual, language-focused, and wonderfully aural poems.

Margaret Christakos is the award-winning author of six acclaimed poetry collections and a novel, "Charisma," shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award. She teaches creative writing and runs Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.