In The Dance Floor Tilts we witness the unfolding of self-discovery. Through Susan Alexander’s poignant poetry we glimpse the preciousness of an individual’s life on the West Coast, full of universal resonances. She guides us through her work flipping burgers as a teenager with the same spirit as when she describes the joy of wandering the hallways of Parisian museums with her widowed mother. She moves us through the troubles of death and divorce with the same care as she tells us of the quiet of a garden buzzing with hummingbirds and the ocean lapping at its shore. Her subtle wording offers insights into the hidden wonders and mysteries, as in a tapestry, that exist in ordinary lives. In worlds where cow-eyed goddesses steal nymph’s tongues and steering wheels are taken over by octopi, there are no established signposts — there are only ideas where betrayals may leave us disembodied and deadened, or devotion and fidelity may make us whole again. Alexander’s poems find beauty in the harsh and austere trappings of everyday life and embody what it means to bear witness to it all.
The Dance Floor Tilts
ISBN: 9781771871525 Categories: Poetry, Canadian, Nature, Subjects & Themes, Women Authors
About the Author
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.
Reviews
“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
Awards
Short Grain poetry prize, 2016 (winner)
Vancouver Writers’ Festival Contest, 2015 (winner)
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