Shortlisted for the 2012 Aqua Lansdowne Prize for Poetry

A fascinating, ambling, loitering mystery story in verse, a whoizzit rather than a whodunit.

In this innovative and arresting narrative poem, Méira Cook’s walker, a young woman, is a character being written by an “old city poet,” who is in turn being written by another poet, for whom the young woman, “Ms. Em Cook,” has been an amanuensis. Always witty and often hilarious, feather-light in touch, the book is an entertaining exploration of serious issues: youth and age; life, death and rebirth; the (dis)connection of language and reality; tradition and the now. It is an assemblage of seven nesting sections, each of them a sort of chapbook speaking to each of the others and rounding out a long poem of great freshness. A Walker in the City is one of a kind, one of the most original books Brick has ever published.

Her lover stirs and reaches for herand listen — it’s as if she cracks into a hundred pieceswith rage and every jagged shard flings itself at his neck.Instead she turns over on her back and practices her thought balloons: if I don’t get there in time start without meand none for me thanks but please help yourself.

“…full of raucous and rhythmic lines voiced with bardic wisdom and choreographed with flash-dance philosophical wit. This is encore poetry, provocative and intensely entertaining.” – Fred Wah