Dennis Leroy Kangalee

Dennis Leroy Kangalee started to seriously write poetry at the age of 32, under the pen name “Nomad Junkie” — after 10 harrowing years trying to survive as an independent theater director. Returning from a 5 year self-imposed exile in 2006, he returned to NYC with a renewed commitment to his art. “Lying Meat” is the result. Written in the aftermath of a draconian lifestyle change (carnivore to herbivore!) and written feverishly between the earthquake in Haiti and the Gulf Coast oil spill, it is a slim volume of urgent poems that seek to make sense of our state of affairs and indict a system that fosters social/historical lies and our acceptance of those lies. While akin to the satiric truth telling of the comedian Bill Hicks or novelist Charles Wright (“The Wig”) and bearing a superficial similarity to the majestic litanies of Saul Williams or the righteous indignation of latter-day Beat inspired David Lerner, the Nomad Junkie’s writing is both personal and political, aggressive and passive, knowing and mystified. Blasting the absurdity of our “Hope” era, this hybrid of poem, story, and tirade (“holy rants”) pays homage to the rebelliousness of Revolutionary Poets of the past (Bob Kaufman, Ginsberg, Baraka, John Beecher) while forging a new platform for modern authors who seek to play with words while raising consciousness (including their own) and challenge the savagery of humanity. Free of pretense, MFA-nonsense, or the “coddled cafe Literature,” for the Smug Generation, Lying Meat is for anyone interested in modern art, new off-the-grid writers, anarchism, and traditional NY poet-preachers.