Miranda Pearson's exquisite poems in The Fire Extinguisher reveal the individual psyche in a way that is both painstakingly beautiful and generous. No detail is too small to find a place in her constantly shifting vision of how we live in the contemporary world. Conscious of how vulnerable she is in this detached gypsy life many of us are forced to live, she longs for something more stable, more permanent. To find an answer, she travels the globe and asks the question, how do we cope with the unsettled space and the profound solitude that we have come to inhabit? When she has to confront her father's death and her own mortality when she learns she has breast cancer, she finds renewal, comfort and the need to comfort. Out of the ruins, through conflicting and complementary views of the world, she reflects upon the ways poetry and the imagination celebrate the wonders of life.

for when we succeed in feeling nothing,

how do we know what hurts us?

Miranda Pearson was born in England and moved to Canada in 1991. She received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, where she was poetry editor for Prism international. Pearson has taught creative writing at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Malahat Review, Event, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Arc, and Prairie Fire. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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