       
 Swift's
Budavox: poems 1990-1999 explored sex, violence,
art, popular culture, and memory, to critical acclaim.
His new collection, Café Alibi, written while the author
lived abroad in Budapest and Paris, extends these
concerns to include history, desire, nostalgia, and the
often competing claims of travel and home. Swift's
crisp, elegant, deceptively calm language questions
images of 'the child, the adult and the outside world'
in ways both witty and disturbing. Café Alibi maps a
stylish itinerary through exotic terrain, offering at
once hostility and ultimate peace, poetry that puts love
to the test and disarms our darkest fears.
Todd Swift is one of Quebec's leading new literary
figures, and internationally known as the co-founder of
the world-wide fusion (poetry) movement, which is
roughly equivalent to the Beats from 40 years ago. He
was born in Montreal on Good Friday, 1966. During his
years at Concordia he was one of the world's top-ranked
debaters. After graduation he wrote more than 60 hours
of TV programming, mainly with Thor Bishopric (now
President of ACTRA), for HBO, Paramount, Fox, and the
CBC, among others. He was the first to bring the new art
form of slam poetry to Canada, with his celebrated Vox
Hunt cabarets of the 90s, which have had many imitators
since, and spawned a renaissance of performance poetry
in Montreal. His 1998 Vehicule Press anthology
(co-edited with Regie Cabico) Poetry Nation is one of
the most popular and celebrated poetry books of its
generation. In 1987 Swift exiled himself to Europe,
where he has since lived and worked as, first, Director
of Kacat Kabare in Budapest, Hungary, and then as a
freelance writer, editor, and impresario in Paris,
France. In October, 2002, he returns to Montreal for a
triple-threat launch: the release of his latest book of
poems, Café Alibi; his "genre-defining" new
electronic/spoken word CD release, The Envelope, Please,
created with the composer/musician Tom Walsh; and the
world's most comprehensive-ever-global survey of new
English-language poets, from New York Press Rattapallax.
Swift is at once both charming, witty and brilliantly
razor-tongued, and would make the ideal radio guest or
print media interview subject. Book him while you can!
Café Alibi by Todd Swift, ISBN 0-919688-53-5, is
available in softcover for $14.95 and ISBN
O-919688-55-1, hardcover for $25.95 at fine book stores
across Canada and into the United States, directly from
DC Books, via
amazon.com or from the Literary Press Group.
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