Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway

A CANADIAN POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR, THE NATIONAL POST
WINNER OF THE PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARD

"Alexandra Oliver has many arrows in her quiver-all of them sharpened to a fine point. This is an excellent and entertaining collection.?-TIMOTHY STEELE

In Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway, Alexandra Oliver zooms in on the inertias, anxieties, comedies, cruelties, and epiphanies of domestic life:

They all had names like Jennifer or Lynne
or Katherine; they all had bone-blonde hair,
that wet, flat cut with bangs. They pulled your chair
from underneath you, shoved their small fists in
your face. Too soon, you knew it would begin,
those minkish teeth like shrapnel in the air,
the Bacchic taunts, the Herculean dare,
their soccer cleats against your porcine shin,
that laugh, which sounded like a hundred birds
escaping from a gunshot through the reeds-
and now you have to face it all again:
the joyful freckled faces lost for words
in supermarkets, as those red hands squeeze
your own. It's been so long! They say. Amen.

Oliver's poems, which she describes as "text-based home movies,? unveil a cinematic vision of suburbia at once comical and poignant: framed to renew our curiosity in the mundane and pressing rhyme and metre to their utmost, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway is a five-star performance from Canada's new formalist sensation.

"Alexandra Oliver is in full command of a saber wit and impeccable ear. Lucky the reader along for the ride.?-JEANNE MARIE BEAUMONT

"Brilliantly contemporary poems in traditional forms, the work of a stunning new voice.?-CHARLES MARTIN

Alexandra Oliver was born in Vancouver, Canada and divides her time between Toronto and Glasgow, Scotland. Her most recent book is Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway (Biblioasis). She currently teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

Auteur

Alexandra Oliver holds an M.A. in Drama/Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Stonecoast. Since emerging onto the Vancouver poetry scene in 1992 and being named the following year as one of the Top Ten Young Artists of the year by The Vancouver Sun, she has gone on to receive two Pushcart Prize nominations, as well as a CBC Literary Award nomination. She has performed her work at places as diverse as Lollapalooza, The National Poetry Slam, the CBC Radio National Poetry Face-Off, the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, the Spectacular Obsessions Fellini Retrospective at the Bell TIFF Lightbox and the Italian Contemporary Film Festival in Toronto. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and publications worldwide, including Orbis Rhyme International, Nexus, The Atlanta Review, The New Guard, Light Quarterly, Future Cycle Poetry, The Raintown Review, and The Vancouver Sun, as well as About.Com's Poems After The Attack anthology, a collection discussing and reflecting upon the aftermath of 9/11. Her first book, Where the English Housewife Shines (Tin Press, London, UK) was released in April, 2007.She is also co-editing (with Annie Finch) an anthology of metrical poetry. Oliver has taught poetry and led workshops in high schools, colleges, libraries, cultural organizations and prisons, and was one of the Directors of the Edgewise Electrolit Centre, an organization created to promote Canadian poetry and new poets through the use of new media. Her interests include form, ekphrasis, translation, performance, and creating poetry syllabi for ESL speakers, seniors, victims of violence, and at-risk youth. Alexandra divides her time between Toronto, Canada, and Glasgow, Scotland, where she teaches poetry through the Govan and Craigton Integration Network and acts as a Staff Writer for the Glasgow Film Theatre.

Contenu

The Promise We Made to the Earthquake
Chinese Food with Gavra, Aged Three
Ottawa Walk-in Clinic Waiting Room
Preschool
Party Music
Rimsky Korsakov on Fifth Avenue
The Village Arsonist
The Widows
A Child's Christmas in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Curriculum Vitae
Sexual History
The Classics Lesson
The Test Cape
Template for a Conversation with a Single Friend
One of These Days
Voted Best Place to Live
Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway
Doug Hill
The Girls and the Eels
The Gulls
Using the Public Binoculars at Sherbet Lake Discovery Centre
Escaping the Ice
Mrs Miller Lays It Out for Her Daughter at the Audition, March
Fixing the Old Folks' Home
How Are You, Bunny?
Taking Care
What You Want the Doctor to Tell You
Over a Faberge Owl
The Toy Catalogue of the Afterlife
The Ghost of the Space Dogs
The Released Ones
Lost Twins
Bad Influence and Senior Kindergarten
The GO Train Arithmetic Song
Modern Camera
Explaining Filial Piety to My Brother in the Bar
A Serbian Man in a Bar Said
If I Knew
The Enigma of Fate