Todd Swift is one of Canada's leading younger expatriate writers. Elegant, moving, and masterful, Rue du Regard forms the final part of a trilogy, following the acclaimed Budavox and Café Alibi. Written in Paris and London between 2001 and 2004, Rue du Regard crosses the channel between these two great cities and between two kinds of poetry: experimental and mainstream. The book deals with looking: in, out, back, and ahead. In almost whiplash motion, certain moods, themes, and images from Swift's earlier collections here snap forward, double-back. The universal accidents of travel and memory, love and desire, violence and innocence, are central.

Todd Swift was born in Montreal on Good Friday, 1966. He grew up in St. Lambert and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. During his college years he was a top-ranked international debater. After graduating, he wrote over sixty hours of TV, mainly with Thor Bishopric, for HBO, Fox, Paramount and Hanna-Barbera, among others. He is one of the founders of the current poetry cabaret scene in Montreal, and was the emcee of Vox Hunt Slam. As a member of the electronic spoken word group Swifty Lazarus, with Tom Walsh, he has released a CD, The Envelope, Please, from Wired On Words, and has appeared on ABC, BBC and CBC radio. From 1998-2001 Swift was Visiting Lecturer at Budapest University (ELTE) in the American Studies Department, and created several courses on film and poetry. His writing has appeared widely, in such periodicals as The National Post, The Literary Review of Canada, enRoute, The Dubliner, Gargoyle and Cordite. He is the co-editor of several significant anthologies, including Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry. Swift's Budavox: poems 1990-1999 was chosen by Geist as one of the five best Canadian books of 1999. He is a Contributing Editor for Matrix, and Poetry Editor of the online magazine Nthposition.com. He currently lives in London, England.

Todd Swift's profile page

"In this collection, Todd Swift — always engagingly readable — extends his ambitious and dazzling range of skills and styles. "
— Roddy Lumsden, author of Mischief Night: New and Selected Poems
"Todd Swift has a remarkably capacious imagination."
—Montreal Review of Books, 2004
"Swift perfects the irreverence of his humour."
—Hour
"We are lucky to have him overseas contributing to this impressive catalogue of written work.... Finally and most tellingly, Swift asks in A Good Person in Snow: 'Is it wrong to hold ever tighter as you disappear?' The answer is no. Swift writes as if he is about to emerge from the blizzard and tell everyone how he did it. A shape shifter with a heart for Canada. Swift is one to recall, savour, and watch."
—The Globe and Mail, March 2005
"One of Swift's endearing qualities is that he pays as much attention to the small people in his life, as he does to his mentors and great artists.... Swift's best poems are restrained, tight-lipped and tempered, yet full of sombre and subtle allusion."
—Books in Canada, Feb. 2005

"Infused with pop culture, Western Europe ... the poems move with their energetic author. Blog-worthy... "
—This Magazine, Jan-Feb 2005
"Musicality hardly begins to describe this rather colossal collection.... "
— Vallum , Fall-Winter 200