Shortlisted for the 2001 Pat Lowther Award and the 2001 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prizes)

Hear the rustle all down the block as people unwrap the box of the Fifties. Life will be a clock, a pet, it will wag its tail and lie down. Food will glisten in mounds on the breakfast tables and skirts will go taffeta-taffeta. — from “Aldredge Place”

In her second book, Slow-Moving Target, Sue Wheeler unwraps more than the Fifties. She unwraps a whole shopful of environments and events, and winds them up and sets them down to delight her readers. There is no sentimentalizing here – either of people or of other places and times – and yet the writing is so consistently sharp, perceptive, and clear, that the overall direction is always towards hope, towards the light.

“Here is a poet who keenly observes the world and its people with humour and love. I will return to these pages again and again for their verbal surprises and unflinching honesty. While highly intelligent, these poems are not intellectual; they speak to us in language that packs a passionate wallop.” – Patricia Young