A raw, beautifully-composed collection exploring addiction, trauma, poverty, and the journey toward recovery and spirituality through the vernacular and iconography of the popular roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons.
Total Party Kill (TPK): tabletop roleplaying slang for the situation of all characters dying in the same in-game encounter.
At turns nightmarish, hilarious, brutally honest, and heart-breaking, TPK maps an unforgettable course into the fantastic dark of back-alley dive-bars, demonic underworlds, various rock bottom floors, and a whole host of monsters, both imagined and frighteningly real.
TPK is a strange and deadly beast combining the imagery of Dungeons & Dragons with a real, life-or-death struggle for sobriety. Entirely unique in perspective and voice, the autobiographical speaker within changes fluidly between the poet, a variety of D&D characters, and combinations of both. The text within comprises a genre-bending quest where nothing-especially continued sobriety-is for certain. Operating less like traditional poetry and more like brief monologues or confessions-but still concentrating on metaphor, meter, and sound-TPK will appeal not only to lovers of the world's bestselling roleplaying game, nor just to lovers of poetry, but for anyone whose life has been touched by addiction.
