Todd Swift's seventh collection of poems takes on the foreign coolness, tone, and lingo of London in the present, while the poet's Montreal past arrives in waves of defiance, solace, and reverie. In poems that demonstrate Swift's abilities as a poet, on the one hand, to out-move The Movement (out bicycle-clip Larkin) and to revive the British Revival on the other, this collection pushes old, droll Mr. Poetic Persona to the brink of discovering an urgent, idealistic, youthful self within. Public, intimate, clever, and heartbreakingly sad, England is Mine reveals a poet at the height of his engagement with the lyric idiom.

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

'Todd Swift has a remarkably capacious imagination.' -- Montreal Review of Books, 2004 'We are lucky to have him overseas contributing to this impressive catalogue of written work.... A shape shifter with a heart for Canada. Swift is one to recall, savour, and watch.' -- The Globe and Mail, March 2005 'One of Swift's endearing qualities is that he pays as much attention to the small people in his life, as he does to his mentors and great artists.... Swift's best poems are restrained, tight-lipped and tempered, yet full of sombre and subtle allusion.' -- Books in Canada, Feb. 2005 'Todd Swift might be thought of as a cosmopolitan, ... savvy, well read, travelled poet ... a promising poet whose work is entertaining, ingenious, humorous and likeable...' -- Poetry London, No. 50, Spring 2005