Search results for ""Author Elee Kraljii Gardiner""

Montaigne Medal Finalist, Eric Hoffer Awards Against Death is an anthology of creative non-fiction exploring the psychological shifts that occur when we prematurely or unexpectedly confront death. Against Death is a natural outgrowth of the editor's experience of surviving a vertebral artery dissection and stroke and the subsequent writing of a long poem memoir about the event. To be "against" something can mean two different things at the same time. "Against" can mean pressed up close to something, yet it can also signify refusal. These texts deal with the affects of this proximity, taking into account any meaning of the word. Rather than showcase only extreme survival stories or difficult biological situations, the pieces in Against Death consider the ways we make sense of death on a personal level and how we integrate that thinking as we continue forward. Against Death articulates the personal experiences of each author's "near-deathness," utilizing fresh and inventive language to represent what "magical thinking" proposes. These pieces are incisive and articulate, avoiding the usual platitudes, feel-good bromides, and pep talks associated with near-death encounters. The writing moves past the sob story and confronts the tough circumstance of facing death with truth and compassion, no matter how ugly or (in)convenient. Contributors include: angela rawlings, Joe Average, Aislinn Hunter, Jennifer van Evra, Maureen Medved, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Bruce Meyer and many others.

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"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.

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Raymond Souster Award nominee. Finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award. In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. The mini-stroke passed quickly but was symptomatic of something larger: a tear in the lining of an artery known as the tunica intima. This long-poem memoir tracks the author's experiences with un/wellness and un/re-familiarity with herself. Shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, Trauma Head disturbs and disorders language and syntax to reconcile appearance with experience. Advance Praise for Trauma Head: "Elee Kraljii Gardiner's Trauma Head is a quicksilvered mirror-a startling and exquisite sequence of poems. The unspeakable' reflected is intensely fierce and sublimely sensual. Difficult, devastating, and meticulously crafted, this work is a rewarding chronicle of persistence through the trauma of recovery and return. Speech and soma are disrupted, shattered, unsheathed and reshaped-and they shimmer with Kraljii Gardiner's luminous strength and control." - Sandra Ridley, author of Silvija (2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Finalist)

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