White Stone: The Alice Poems

Stephanie Bolster

Awards: 1998 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry

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.

Signal
Poetry 1998

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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."

Stephanie Bolster BIO

Stephanie Bolster's first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General's and the Gerald Lampert Awards in 1998. She has published two other collections, Two Bowls of Milk, which won the Archibald Lampman Award, and Pavilion. Raised in Burnaby, B.C., she now teaches at Concordia University and lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec.

Other books by Stephanie Bolster: Penned: Animals in Zoos in Poems

Trade paperback
96 pp 9" x 6"
ISBN13: 9781550650990

CDN $12.00
US & International
US $12.00