footlights

Inside the phobic and the crushing we trudge through the wreckage, the slippage, and the comic, in our search for joy. The beauty in these poems is an amalgam, like a gathering storm, of the meteorological and political, the mundane and the distressing.

AUTHOR

Pearl Pirie

Pearl Pirie is the author of been shed bore (2010) and Thirsts (2011), which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her poetry has been published in numerous literary journals, including filling Station, BafterC, Arc Poetry Magazine, Gusts, PRECIPICe, Dandelion, and This Magazine. Her poem “Summer Names” was shortlisted in the Best Canadian Poetry, 2014, and she made the 50-poem longlist for Best Canadian Poetry, 2011, for her poem “The First Mother’s Day After Dad’s Death.” (Tightrope Books). Pirie’s work has been included in several anthologies, focused on innovative poets, haiku, and other genres of writing. She has several chapbooks produced in Canada, France and Japan. She has produced two dozen titles under phafours press. Since 2009 she has managed the Tree Seed Workshop Series. Connect with Pirie on her website, www.pearlpirie.com, her poetry and poetics blog, http://pagehalffull.com/pesbo, or on Twitter @pesbo.

Reviews

There’s a Zen story where a student asks a master to summarize his teaching in one word. The master says, “Attention.” The student, not satisfied, asks for two words. “Attention. Attention,” the master replies. In footlights, Pearl Pirie gives careful attention to the everyday details and daily strange wonders yielding poems rich in observation and nuance asking; What is it to live in the world and to have a life? What is it to pay attention to one’s own attentiveness? Attend to these poems as they attend to you. They delight.
– Gary Barwin, author of For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe

Sensuous and deeply philosophical, the expansive poems in footlights put forth vital questions that push not only against but brilliantly into, the very essence of self as a combining form in these swiftly changing times.
– Brenda Schmidt, former Sask Poet Laureate, author of Culverts Beneath the Narrow Road