Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick's second major poetry collection is a cat's cradle of startling imagistic leaps and quiet meditations. Burdick sets her lateral gaze on small-town news stories, banal occurrences, and the tiny things of a semi-rural life. In the tradition of John Ashbery or Lorine Niedecker, her cubist portraits and landscapes are imbued with a joyous wordplay, even when the poems are heartbreaking. Each Burdick poem Ñ whether it's five lines or five pages Ñ is a journey of surprise, bewilderment, and perhaps even revelation.

Alice Burdick lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. She is co-owner of Lexicon Books in Lunenburg, and serves on the board of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia. In the early 1990s, she was co-editor of The Eternal Network, and assistant coordinator of the Toronto Small Press Fair. She is the author of many chapbooks and three full-length poetry collections: Simple Master (Pedlar Press, 2002); Flutter (Mans?eld Press, 2008); and Holler (Mansfield Press, 2012). Her work has appeared in many magazines, online and in print, and was shortlisted for the First Lemonhound Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been included in several anthologies, including Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the In?uence (The Mercury Press), Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press), Pissing Ice: An Anthology of New Canadian Poets (BookThug), To Find Us: words and images of Halifax (HRMP), and the forthcoming The Child Alone Anthology (Frog Hollow Press).

Alice Burdick's profile page

Mental radio combs the Nova Scotia air: a fragment of language, a quick burst of landscape, static of the daily news. Alice Burdick's Flutter is restless, nervous, invigorating, the fearsome uncertainty of thought flickering (fluttering) over the gaps. Tense and unpretty, it is a book to reckon with.Ó (Maggie Helwig)