Mormon Heroin is an epic book of poetry—400+ pages—that charts the map of one year in a man’s life as it details the dissolution of his marriage, sexual identities, values—assigned and unassigned—through language and culture and recovery from drug addiction all seen through the prism of binary opposites as well as esoteric and hermetic codes that deconstruct the role of the poet in American culture as he makes an odyssey through memory creating a thematic and musical narrative using the conceptual rock album as the book’s template.

“Immediately dipped into Mormon Heroin on its arrival. Enjoying it immensely. You are self-revelatory without being self-important humorous without being silly ironic without the obviousness mysterious without the coyness. You are a serious international literary figure. I bow.”--Reinaldo Garcia

Erik Vatne is a poet and visual artist born in New Jersey. Educated at Bard College and Trinity College Dublin his books include Cartographies of Silence (Station Hill Press) XXIII Epistles (Graffiti Kolkata) Dun Scotus on His Sickbed (Burning Apple Press) and Endings (Round Lake Press.). He is assembling his next collection of poems Pulaski Skyway & Other Poems as well as selection of visual phenomena Adjustments: (Works on paper Polaroid photographs & 3 paintings.) He continues his Jungian studies in Zurich.