Alexandra Oliver's second poetry collection called Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway (Biblioasis 2013) is described as text-based home movies about the comedies, cruelties, and epiphanies of domestic life. In 2014 the League of Canadian Poets announced Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway had won the $1,000 Pat Lowther Memorial Award given annually to a book of poetry by a Canadian woman.

Born in Vancouver, Oliver previously published Where the English Housewife Shines (Tin Press London, UK 2007). In 2013, she was co-editing The Rotary Dial, a journal of formalist poetry based in Toronto, and teaching in the Stonecoast M.F.A. Program at the University of Southern Maine. Her work has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize and a CBC Literary Award in Poetry. She studied Italian film and theatre, only to graduate from university and declare, "Whoa! Where are all the film history jobs?";

Oliver was cited as one of the Top Ten Young Artists of the year by The Vancouver Sun in 1992. She has since performed at Lollapalooza, The National Poetry Slam, the CBC Radio National Poetry Face-Off, the Bowery Poetry Club, the Spectacular Obsessions Fellini Retrospective at the Bell TIFF Lightbox and the Italian Contemporary Film Festival in Toronto. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Orbis Rhyme International, Nexus, The Atlanta Review, The New Guard, Light Quarterly, Future Cycle Poetry, The Raintown Review and The Vancouver Sun. As of 2013, she divided her time between Toronto and Glasgow, Scotland, where she taught poetry through the Govan and Craigton Integration Network and acted as a Staff Writer for the Glasgow Film Theatre. A film history job at last, sort of.

BOOKS:

Where the English Housewife Shines (Tin Press London, UK, 2007)

Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway (Biblioasis 2013) 978-1-927428-43-6 $17.95

[BCBW 2014]