Stephanie Bolster | White Stone: The Alice Poems

November 30th, 2008

Stephanie Bolster – White Stone : The Alice Poems

Please click the cover to enlarge.

10 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide

Winner of the 1998 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. This is Stephanie Bolster’s first book. She lives in Ottawa.

The Governor General’s Award jury citation:

“WHITE STONE: THE ALICE POEMS was judged the best book of poetry in 1998 for as many reasons as there are poems in this powerful sequence, but due primarily to Stephanie Bolster’s ability to depict the emotional life of Alice Liddell as girl and woman in brilliant narrative juxtapositions. She uses her lyrical powers to present Alice the creation and Alice the person in a cultural context that, on one level, re-examines cognition and dissociation and on another, liberates the poetic sequence from the monotony of story and closure.”

These evocative poems move from the icon of Alice in Wonderland to the imagined figure of Alice out of Wonderland–on a Vancouver beach with the poet, underground with Persephone, in Memphis with Elvis. But first they explore the life of the real Alice Liddell (1852-1934), who sat still for Charles Dodgson’s camera and inspired the Alice books which prompted his rise to fame as Lewis Carroll. The publication of White Stone in 1998 coincides with the centenary of Lewis Carroll’s death.

Stephanie Bolster won the Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry in 1996, The Malahat Review’s long poem prize in 1997, and the Norma Epstein Award in 1993. Her poetry has appeared in the anthology Breathing Fire: Canada’s New Poets, on the Vancouver and Victoria transit systems, and in over thirty literary journals and anthologies, including Fiddlehead, Prairie Schooner, and Descant. Born and raised in Vancouver, she now writes and teaches writing in Ottawa.

Stephanie Bolster is an obviously talented young poet, and the reception of White Stone has rightly acknowledged her importance…White Stone is a very rich first book.–Geoffrey Cook, The Danforth Review

White Stone: The Alice Poems is a successful book not only on the strength of its interesting subject matter; however, it also employs an incredible talent for assonance and precision of language.–Adarn Getty, The New Quarterly, Vol.15, No. 3.

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