Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway

A CANADIAN POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR, THE NATIONAL POSTWINNER OF THE PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARDAlexandra Oliver has many arrows in her quiverall of them sharpened to a fine point. This is an excellent and entertaining collection.TIMOTHY STEELEIn 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 Lynneor Katherine; they all had bone-blonde hair,that wet, flat cut with bangs. They pulled your chairfrom underneath you, shoved their small fists inyour 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 birdsescaping from a gunshot through the reedsand now you have to face it all again:the joyful freckled faces lost for wordsin supermarkets, as those red hands squeezeyour own. Its been so long! They say. Amen.Olivers 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 Canadas 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 BEAUMONTBrilliantly contemporary poems in traditional forms, the work of a stunning new voice.CHARLES MARTINAlexandra 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.