Deportment: The Poetry of Alice Burdick

By Alice Burdick

• contains previously unpublished poems as well as some only available from micro press publications
• Alice Burdick is a Canadian poet who shares more in common with postmodern American poets such as Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, Barbara Guest, and Lorine Niedecker
• author owns a bookstore (LEXICON Books) in Lunenberg, NS. She has longstanding ties to Toronto and Vancouver as well.
• poems address women’s rights, the dangers of dogma, destruction of the environment, class conflict, alien or paranormal visions

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781771123815

Alice Burdick

Alice Burdick is the author of four poetry collections, including Book of Short Sentences (2016). Her work has appeared in several anthologies and magazines and was shortlisted for the Lemonhound Poetry Prize in 2014. She is the co-owner of Lexicon Books in Lunenburg and lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.

Book preview

Deportment

The Poetry of Alice Burdick

Deportment

The Poetry of Alice Burdick

Selected

with an

introduction by

Alessandro Porco

and an

afterword by

Alice Burdick

Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. This work was supported by the Research Support Fund.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Burdick, Alice

[Poems. Selections]

Deportment: the poetry of Alice Burdick / selected with an introduction by Alessandro Porco and an afterword by Alice Burdick.

(Laurier poetry series)

Includes bibliographical references.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77112-380-8 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-77112-381-5 (EPUB).—

ISBN 978-1-77112-382-2 (PDF)

I. Porco, Alessandro, editor II. Title. III. Series: Laurier poetry series

PS8553.U6267A6 2019                     C811'.54                     C2018-903393-2       

C2018-903394-0

Front-cover image by Drew Klassen: Squall Coming, 2012 (oil on canvas, 22 × 28).

Cover design and interior design by P.J. Woodland.

© 2018 Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

www.wlupress.wlu.ca

This book is printed on FSC® certified paper and is certified Ecologo. It contains post-consumer fibre, is processed chlorine free, and is manufactured using biogas energy.

Printed in Canada

Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Table of Contents

Foreword, Brian Henderson and Neil Besner

Biographical Note

Introduction: Influenza Confucius; or, In Fluent Confusion: The Poetry of Alice Burdick, Alessandro Porco

from the Deportment MS 1988–1993 (unpublished)

Graffiti

Dolphin

White Ribbons

from Voice of Interpreter

Untitled [There’s a limit to his input]

Untitled [I’ll not be Queen of the nodding men]

from Signs Like This

Fact

Fable

Space Program

from Fun Venue

Class

You Dead

Tempo Rapture

from Covered

Covered

from a Time

Mirrored Walls

a Time

from Simple Master

Humans Who Stand Around

Spadina Way

For Gary

Red Eye

How the Girl Gets Killed

from The Human About Us

The human about us

What to do with bad men

from 3 Poems

A plan

from Flutter

We are the residents

I circuit hot foot

Nostrum

Specific times of joy

from Holler

Mahone Bay rhapsody

No regret

Broken in our field

Brains heart zombies

Remembrance Day, 2011

from Book of Short Sentences

Revelation II

Nosferatu, kindergarten

Travelling poem—Pittsburgh

Distraction poem

The record’s hold

Don’t forget

Afterword, Alice Burdick

Acknowledgements

Foreword

The Laurier Poetry Series was conceived in 2002 as a means to celebrate Canadian poetry and to introduce new readers to the richness and diversity of its poets. Rather than curate another large anthology that featured only a few poems by each poet, we thought it a good idea to suggest the real range of a poet’s work by enlarging the selection. Our anthology would have to comprise many volumes. But why stick with a many-volumed anthology? Why not create a series of small and affordable selecteds? Each volume could be introduced by a knowledgeable and reader- and poet-friendly critic in greater depth than in normal anthologies, and each could provide space for the poet to respond or participate in an additional way by contributing an afterword such as no standard anthology could offer.

Readers could pick and choose which poets they wanted to explore; instructors could also pick and choose combinations of volumes in a package for their students—and could change this selection from semester to semester. And the volumes could reach an international audience. Each would also have the potential to open out onto other books by the featured poet.

That was the blueprint. The Series was launched in 2004, with Catherine Hunter’s selection of the poetry of Lorna Crozier, Before the First Word. There have been over twenty-five volumes since, offering introductions to a wide range of poets and poetries, and more are in the works. The Laurier Poetry Series is now the most comprehensive collection of Canadian poetries in print anywhere. Most volumes are also available as digital editions.

The consummate professionalism of the team at Wilfrid Laurier University Press, especially Managing Editor Rob Kohlmeier, has ensured that these sometimes technically tricky volumes are presented accurately and beautifully.

What continues to inspire us about the LPS is its reception across the country. The love and art and passion and intimacy that twenty-five-plus editors and twenty-five-plus poets have brought to their volumes; the innumerable hours and conversations and meetings, the thousands of emails between and among poets and editors and the staff at WLU Press; the generous reviews in the country’s journals; the reception in classrooms and beyond: all of this eloquently speaks to the joyful proliferation of poetry in Canada today.

With each new volume, LPS hopes to continue to recognize the growing provenance of this wealth, the wide range of these riches. Our poets— and their readers—deserve nothing less.

—Brian Henderson and Neil Besner

General Editors

Biographical Note

Alice Burdick was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1970, and has lived in Espanola, Ontario, Vancouver and Roberts Creek, British Columbia, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. She now lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. She has been involved with the small press community in Canada since the early 1990s, when she was co-editor, with Victor Coleman, of The Eternal Network. This imprint produced chapbooks, including several of her own works: Voice of Interpreter, Signs Like This, and Fun Venue. Her poetry has been published in chapbook and pamphlet form by other micro and small presses, such as Proper Tales Press (a Time, My Lump in the Bed: Love Poems for George W. Bush); Letters Press (Covered); BookThug (The Human About Us); Laurel Reed Press (3 Poems); and above/ground press (Pleasure Bristles with Gary Barwin).

Burdick’s work has also appeared in various magazines, both printed and digital, such as The Puritan, Hava LeHaba (from Tel Aviv, Israel), Event Magazine, Canadian Poetries,