Guy Elston’s The Character Actor Convention
Reviewed by Dawn Macdonald
Imagine getting an invitation to attend a “character actor convention” (supposing, for the moment, that you’re a character actor). Do you go as yourself, or in character? Who delivers the keynote? “We applaud, but this might be an act,” warns Guy Elston in his collection’s titular poem. In what ways does this scenario differ from the performances of roles in everyday life? “The convention closes, as ever, on a question: / Are we nearly them yet?”
Many of the poems in Elston’s debut collection, The Character Actor’s Convention, could be read as character sketches. Some act in supporting roles, while others take on leading parts. We meet Napoleon on his island of exile, for example, and a Joan who seems very likely to be “of Arc.” We also hear the lamentations of an overlarge prizewinning pumpkin, and listen in on the reflections of an ovine participant in “The Great Sheep Panic of 1888.” Says the sheep, “It’s that word panic / I take offence to. Like you show your true self / for one moment and everyone says / Are you feeling okay?”
“There’s a cool distance to these poems, with glimpses of intimacy, a dizzying dazzle of reflective surfaces playing off one another.”
Writing for the Arc Poetry newsletter (September 2025), Elston tells readers, “If The Character Actor Convention was an attendee at a character actor convention it would try to listen to the speeches but mostly dissociate, continuing an internal dialogue with a former teacher it hasn’t seen in years,” and also, “If The Character Actor Convention was a poet called Guy Elston it would be, frankly, shocked.” These remarks highlight the ways in which Elston interposes layers and mirrors between himself as a poet and the “I” of the poems. He’s often tongue-in-cheek, using humour to soften heartbreak and disaster. There’s a cool distance to these poems, with glimpses of intimacy, a dizzying dazzle of reflective surfaces playing off one another.
Elston achieves his effects without resorting to overly poetic diction. His tone is newsy, in the style of The Guardian or Business Insider, both of which he credits in the notes as sources for epigraphs to some of the poems. He’s a frequent reader of those quirky scientific tidbits that pop up in our feeds, about how rats appear to enjoy driving tiny cars in the laboratory, or how fungal mycelia can operate a moving robot body, or (less pleasantly) how microplastics have made their way into the human placenta. He’s brilliant at parodying the language of corporate communications, advertising, and propaganda.
At times, he seems to be making fun of the literary enterprise, reminding us that poems, like personas, may be constructed to deceive. “Ice cream doesn’t resemble itself in photos,” he points out, “they use mashed potatoes instead. / That hurts.” He’s skeptical of art’s pretensions to profundity, yet perhaps he would still like to believe. In the prose poem “Home Sick,” he remarks, “Beauty is not an ideal in my country, but a tax-payer funded, licensed service. You may compare beauties with your neighbours, leaving comments in red suggestion boxes.” About this place, he says, “… it is not in fact a country, not exactly, but some other form of myth.” In the interplay of myths, rhetorical forms, historical figures and imagined characters, Elston continuously gropes toward something we might tentatively label as truth.
About the Author
Guy Elston was born and raised in Oxford, UK. After various jobs, journeys and other lifetimes he surfaced in Toronto in 2020. He has an MA in History from the University of Amsterdam. Since moving to Canada his poetry has been published by The Malahat Review, Canadian Literature, Event, The Literary Review of Canada, Vallum, The Antigonish Review and other journals. His chapbook Automatic Sleep Mode was published by Anstruther Press in 2023. The Character Actor Convention is his debut full-length collection. Guy lives in Toronto and can be found at poetry events. He's a member of the Meet the Presses collective and is a first reader for Untethered magazine.
About the Reviewer
Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she grew up without electricity or running water. She won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize for her poetry collection Northerny. She posts weekly at Reviews of Books I Got for Free or Cheap (on Substack), as well as reviewing for journals and for The Seaboard Review of Books.
Book Details
Publisher : Porcupine's Quill
Publication date : Sept. 1 2025
Language : English
ISBN-10 : 177422173X
ISBN-13 : 978-1774221730
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Thank you Dawn for your perceptive review. I feel seen!