Alibi Lullaby

Norma Cole is the author of poetry books including Fate News, Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside, Where Shadows Will, Collective Memory, Spinoza in Her Youth, and Actualities, a collaboration with painter Marina Adams. Her translations from French include works by Danielle Collobert and Jean Daive. Cole has published poems in literary magazines including Gramma, Posit, BrooklynRail, Art in America, Hambone, Sulfur, and Conjunctions, and in anthologies such as American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry and Best American Experimental Writing. Cole was born in Toronto, Canada, and she lives in San Francisco.

"A Canadian who has lived in San Francisco since 1977, Cole has been an important figure in the city’s poetry scene for decades. A teacher, translator, and painter, as well as the author of more than a dozen books, Cole brings an impressive skill with the chiaroscuro of obscurity and lit clarity to this sequence of lyric poems whose title (blurring law court and childhood bedroom) references a distancing of body and mind. Treating her readers as present and wakeful co-creators, Cole invites us, in the opening poem of Alibi Lullaby, to, 'Take a Look,' connecting observation to both 'history' and 'power,' where 'memory' is part of a 'truth cure—' (as the poet notes with characteristic wryness, 'it’s a start'). Edgy, whiplash quick shifts of tone and collage-like juxtapositions make this read or ride exciting."