Serpentine Loop

Poetry. Music. Finalist, Raymond Souster Award League of Canadian Poets. [B]eautiful debut collection...too many great poems inside to quote...Gardiner's lush, piercing collection is layered with climatological subtext and personal history, sure enough of its voice to thaw the coldest of hearts.--BUST, Amber Tamblyn's Poetry Corner Writers, like skaters, score the blank sheet and test the edge of inclusion and exclusion. Most of these poems begin with a word from skating and push off to another topic. Others revisit ideas of femininity, control and language as pattern, or visit the past through movement, or enact principles from the rink such as symmetry, joy, endurance, crescendo and accent, revolution, response. The blade melts ice via friction and pressure. I drifted away from skating but the language is imprinted in me, too, a tracing, a line extending beyond the margins. (from SERPENTINE LOOP) These are engaging and poignant poems about life on and off the ice.