These evocative poems move from the icon of Alice in Wonderland to the imagined figure of Alice out of Wonderland: on a Vancouver beach with the poet, underground with Persephone, in Memphis with Elvis. But first they explore the life of the real Alice Liddell (1852-1934), who sat still for Charles Dodgson's camera and inspired the Alice books which prompted his rise to fame as Lewis Carroll. The publication of White Stone in 1998 coincides with the centenary of Lewis Carroll's death.

Stephanie Bolster’s first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems (Signal/Véhicule), won the Governor General`s Award and the Gerald Lampert Award in 1998 and will appear in French with Les Éditions du Noroît in autumn 2007, translated by Daniel Canty. She has also published Two Bowls of Milk (McClelland & Stewart), which won the Archibald Lampman Award and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award, and Pavilion (McClelland & Stewart). Her work has appeared in literary journals internationally and has also garnered her the Bronwen Wallace Award, the Norma Epstein Award, and The Malahat Review`s Long Poem Prize. Her several chapbooks include, most recently, Biodôme (above/ground) and Past the Roman Arena and the Cedar of Lebanon (Delirium). She is the editor of The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems (McGill-Queen’s) by the late Ottawa poet Diana Brebner and is currently editing an anthology of poetry and prose excerpts pertaining to zoos. Raised in Burnaby, B.C., she now lives in Montréal, where she teaches in the creative writing programme at Concordia University.

Stephanie Bolster's profile page

The Governor General's Award jury citation: "WHITE STONE: THE ALICE POEMS was judged the best book of poetry in 1998 for as many reasons as there are poems in this powerful sequence, but due primarily to Stephanie Bolster's ability to depict the emotional life of Alice Liddell as girl and woman in brilliant narrative juxtapositions. She uses her lyrical powers to present Alice the creation and Alice the person in a cultural context that, on one level, re-examines cognition and dissociation and on another, liberates the poetic sequence from the monotony of story and closure."