"Writers, like skaters, score the blank sheet and test the edge of inclusion and exclusion. Most of these poems begin with a word from skating and push off to another topic. Others revisit ideas of femininity, control and language as pattern, or visit the past through movement, or enact principles from the rink such as symmetry, joy, endurance, crescendo and accent, revolution, response. The blade melts ice via friction and pressure. I drifted away from skating but the language is imprinted in me, too, a tracing, a line extending beyond the margins." (from Serpentine Loop)

These are engaging and poignant poems about life on and off the ice.

Elee Kraljii Gardiner founded and directs Thursdays Writing Collective. She is the editor and publisher of seven anthologies from the Collective and the co-editor with John Asfour of V6A: Writing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012), which was shortlisted for the 2012 City of Vancouver Book Award. Her poetry earned the 2011 Lina Chartrand Poetry Award and was a finalist for Malahat's Far Horizons 2014 Prize and the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award. Serpentine Loop (Anvil Press, 2016) is her first book of poetry. A frequent collaborator, she is originally from Boston.

Elee Kraljii Gardiner's profile page