Description
These poems peel back the layers of suburban life and the American Dream. Vivian Maier was a self-taught street photographer who worked as a nanny for wealthy employers in New York and Chicago. The poet imagines her as a documentarian who is compassionate, abrasive, and meditative, while her subjects provide their own narrative. More than anything, the poems are a response to her work, which is all we have that comes directly from her. It is a deliberate challenge to the "mystery nanny" she is reduced to in much of the constructed narrative of her life.
About the author
Bruce Rice has published three books of poetry. Bruce's first collection, Daniel, received the Canadian Authors Association Award. In 2005, The Illustrated Statue of Liberty (Coteau), received a Saskatchewan Book Award. He also received Grain Magazine's 2002 Anne Szumigalksi Award for the best poem or sequence published in Grain that year. Poems from this collection were shortlisted in the 2008 CBC Literary Awards and were commissioned for the opening of the national tour of the Joe Fafard Retrospective Exhibition. His work has appeared in Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Grain, Canadian Author and Bookman, and Event.