Suzanne Hancock
ISBN 1-894469-22-4
$16.95 CDN
$12.95 US
72 pp
Suzanne Hancock’s debut collection of poems seeks to explore seemingly disparate things: family bonds, self deceit, lost desire, and the final days of Descartes’ life. With precision and urgent honesty these poems take us from an apple orchard in summer, to a Dutch slaughterhouse, to diving from a train bridge. Yet, there is cohesiveness throughout these pages that can be explained by the author’s yearning to discover the world, to be transformed by language and its implications. In Another Name for Bridge, the author attempts to link pieces of the world: experience and memory, one side of the river to the other, the dialogue between natural philosophy and painterly practice. These poems sing the praises of connection, but never seem to forget the vast spaces that cannot be linked.
Praise for Another Name for Bridge
“There is such power and precision in Ms. Hancock’s poems-not a syllable out of place, not a line surplus to requirements, producing a kind of tensile strength by which the most carefully considered choice in words, a language utterly free of adornment or affectation, bears abundant tidings, heavy traffic and rich cargo. Of her several gifts, this ‘metaphoring’ is the author’s most singular and salutary. A welcome and well-wrought debut by a writer of real substance.”
-Thomas Lynch, finalist for the National Book Award
“Welcome to Suzanne Hancock’s voice, clear as a bell. Give thanks for her first offering, all fineness of feeling and redolent with the fragrance of poetry as itself. Unstriving, distilled, well-crafted, wise, true and beautiful.”
– Lorna Goodison, winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize
Hancock’s poems were shortlisted for the Bronwen Wallace Award in 2004.
