Description:
As the dance floor of life tilts beneath our feet, do we keep dancing? In this inspired collection of Susan Alexander's poems, we sway to the rhythms of passion, death, grief, and how we are connected in our lives. The individual moments making up the tune of this poet's life offer the possibility of finding the beauty within the everyday resonance of our own existence.
Brief description: Susan Alexander is the winner of the 2016 Short Grain poetry prize and the 2015 Vancouver Writers' Festival Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in SubTerrain, Arc, CV2, Grain, Room, The Antigonish Review, and PRISM international. She is a regular at Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane's poetry retreats. For inspiration, Alexander writes from eclectic experiences -- as a chambermaid, CBC Radio journalist, stay-at-home mother, waitress, lay preacher, and associate at a boutique investment firm, as well as from her family history and passions. She is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets
Review Quotes:
"Susan Alexander's creations are testament to John Berger's assertion that poems are closer to prayer than they are to prose. Especially in the last section, I felt as if I'd come upon a contemporary book of common prayer, each entry fresh and deeply resonant, rich with the details of daily life and the poet's desire to touch the sacred. It is in her boldness to do so, in her clear-eyed vision, and in her humble acceptance of human frailties that these poems shine." -- Lorna Crozier
"Susan Alexander's debut collection picks us up and dances us through poems full of speed and urgency, poems about working in the family burger joint, about sorting cherries, about ashes. Poems about sex and saxophones. Dramatic and clear, tender, the poetry stories us along. Full of colour, it rocks us, cha cha's us, waltzes us, tilting but steady, to the radiant end." -- Arleen Paré, author of Lake of Two Mountains and Leaving Now