“I’m just going to break this, okay?” writes Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick in her sixth full-length poetry collection. The 14 long poems in Ox Lost, Snow Deep range from confessional narrative to collage to surrealism, exploring representations of history, both public and personal, and within that, they probe what is considered important and what is considered not important. These poems include takes on semi-rural existence, raising a family, and living in poverty. They also veer toward popular culture: using movies, music, social media language as jumping-off points or simply by taking those media’s forms. Burdick confronts the very embarrassment of simply being alive: excruciation, apology, loss, humour, mistakes, and grief—and the freedom achieved by acknowledging these things.
Burdick’s first collection of new poems since 2018, Ox Lost, Snow Deep will alter your ways of thinking and reading.