Jonathan Ball thinks you will never finish reading his new book of poems, Ex Machina (Book Thug).

The teacher, newlywed and Uptown contributor has created a book that works like a poem-creating device. Every line directs you to a different page in the book. In reality, it's a never-ending story that might just remind you of something you read as a child.

"The book is a word trap, looping back," Ball says. "I liked those 'write-your-adventure' books as a kid. I wanted it to be a fun, readable book. When I do readings, I try to make them interesting, a reading with added features."

He says the book is about "how machines have changed what it means to be human," and argues that books are machinic in this sense.

"What I found interesting is this notion, how do machines affect our being human? What happens when you take God out of the equation?" (Clever dicks might realize that Deus is missing from Ball's Ex Machina.)

Ball admits that the book is part of that great Canadian literary tradition, the long poem, but adds that he wanted to muck things up some.

"I wanted to do a long poem but have something minimalist about it," he says. "I wanted it to have a strange energy. I wanted to get away from the traditional long poem and do something strange, something more speculative." (He adds that his book shares its title with a forgotten British suspense novel.)

"A lot of allusions in most poems allude to other poems. A lot of my allusions are to quantum mechanics."

Ball promises "a night of reading, robots and British thrills" when he launches Ex Machina at McNally Robinson, Grant Park on Jan. 14 at 8 p.m. (that's tonight, for those picking up Uptown on Thursday.)

. . .

Susan Holbrook claims that Joy is So Exhausting, at least according to the title of her new collection of poems (Coach House Books). I don't know about that. When I finished the book, I was exhilarated.

These are poems about things such as motherhood, breakups and chocolate. The results are clever and dizzying. One poem blenderizes a guide to writing essays by Constance Rooke with notes written by her home-inspection consultant, leavened with excerpts from Leaves of Grass.

My favourite piece, Insert, malaprops the directions from a Tampax box, asking the question, "Your First Timpani?"

"After washing your hams, take your produce out of the rapture."