Swift's Budavox: poems 1990-1999 explored sex, violence, art, and memory, to critical acclaim. His new collection, Café Alibi, written while the author lived abroad in Budapest and Paris, extends these concerns to include popular culture, history, desire, nostalgia, and the often competing claims of travel and home. Swift's crisp, elegant, deceptively calm language questions images of 'the child, the adult and the outside world' in ways both witty and disturbing. Café Alibi maps a stylish itinerary through exotic terrain, offering at once hostility and ultimate peace, poetry that puts love to the test and disarms our darkest fears.

Todd Swift was born in Montreal on Good Friday, 1966. He grew up in St. Lambert and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. During his college years he was a top-ranked international debater. After graduating, he wrote over sixty hours of TV, mainly with Thor Bishopric, for HBO, Fox, Paramount and Hanna-Barbera, among others. He is one of the founders of the current poetry cabaret scene in Montreal, and was the emcee of Vox Hunt Slam. As a member of the electronic spoken word group Swifty Lazarus, with Tom Walsh, he has released a CD, The Envelope, Please, from Wired On Words, and has appeared on ABC, BBC and CBC radio. From 1998-2001 Swift was Visiting Lecturer at Budapest University (ELTE) in the American Studies Department, and created several courses on film and poetry. His writing has appeared widely, in such periodicals as The National Post, The Literary Review of Canada, enRoute, The Dubliner, Gargoyle and Cordite. He is the co-editor of several significant anthologies, including Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry. Swift's Budavox: poems 1990-1999 was chosen by Geist as one of the five best Canadian books of 1999. He is a Contributing Editor for Matrix, and Poetry Editor of the online magazine Nthposition.com. He currently lives in London, England.

Todd Swift's profile page

“This slim edition ... contains elegant, swift poems — precise as shards of glass.”

— Bridget Hourican,The Dubliner Nov. 2002

“Swift writes exquisitely about everyday experiences, changing the base metal of our existence into something fine and valuable.”

— Tony Lewis-Jones, Poetry Scotland

“[Swift] arranges that formal, renegade language into an entirely believable, and often lovely, alibi.”

— Lisa Pasold, Literary Review of Canada, Dec. 2002

“These are the words of a poet where words are ... lavishly seemingly uncontrolled but finally right, fitting, suitably apt.”

— Harriet Zinnes, The Hollins Critic, June 2003

“Were a director like Jean-Luc Goddard to create a full-length feature film from a collection of poems, Café Alibi would be the perfect choice. ”

— Vallum, Fall-Winter 2005

“...a collection that is both colourful and sharply crafted. Café Alibi feels packed somehow, a kind of suitcase of stylish imagery for the elegant traveler. Here are poems infused by Budapest and Paris, and written in a brilliantly intriguing way.... It’s an impressive collection.”

— Leviathan Quarterly, 2003