Wolfgang Carstens

Wolfgang Carstens lives in Alberta, Canada with his wife, five kids, two cats and a dog. Wolfgang’s first book of poetry, CRUDELY MISTAKEN FOR LIFE, was released by Epic Rites Press in 2010. It has since garnered outstanding critical reviews, been placed on the “recommended reading list” at Small Press Distribution, and is presently stocked in numerous public and academic libraries around the world.

“Wolfgang Carstens debuts here with a rock-solid collection of poems where you can sense the presence of the viscera under the blood-coated muscle that is the text. And yet the poems are surprisingly gentle and nostalgic sometimes, sometimes angry, sometimes philosophical, sometimes funny. Not so much a traditional anthology of poems as a manifesto and statement of intent combined with a dissertation on life and the sort of things that are deserving in it, love, loyalty, and the forgotten child inside.”—David McLean.

“CRUDELY MISTAKEN FOR LIFE is a tour de force of poetic skill that you won’t put down until the sun is coming up and your tears are spent and the bottle of Patron next to you is bone dry.”— Diana Rose

“This book grows on you. Enters your blood. This is compassionate, carefully crafted poetry fascinating to read and worthy of detailed study.”—George Anderson

“This book is stunningly evocative. Be careful when you pick up this book, you might not be able to put it down.”—Tony Moffeit

“Straight talk, boiled down from experience, with the fat of fancy skimmed off the top. That’s what we’ve got here. Carstens gets it—he doesn’t waste time with the flowers; he digs in the dirt, about six feet down, to the root of it all.”—RL Raymond

“This is poetry, rich, full and brimming with life, even that wrought from the darkest corners.”—Jack Henry

Contact Wolfgang Carstens at [email protected] for more information.