SUE’S BOOKS

 

The Artificial Parisienne

I’m so delighted this book is finally out in the world! I’ve been working on it since 2016 and have loved every minute of the research which, of course, entailed multiple research trips to Paris!

Sue Burge’s skylark shout of yes yes yes to Paris is no mere tourist crush. All honesty, by way of the Nouvelle Vague, couch-surfing, Oulipo, and the bouquinistes, Burge examines her long-term flawed affair with the City of Light, unravelling its urban celluloid distortions like a shifty-eyed Seine siren, leaving wet lipstick kisses all over town. We can’t help but want to follow her trail.’
Lisa Pasold

‘Here are the many recipes for Paris, that ‘fickle madame blowing lipstick in your eyes’. In this collection, its bread, calentica and every one of its clichés are made new by lifelong visitor, Sue Burge. Her poems entice with their range and invention as she explores the city, its characters, history and her place in it. There’s Thanksgiving dinner at Gertrude Stein’s, Kurt Cobain at Père Lachaise, Sacré Coeur gleaming like salt in moonlight, and absinthe that looks like liquid peridot and curiously tastes like childhood. Burge may style herself ‘The Artificial Parisienne’, but her Paris will never be a cardigan.’
Kate Noakes

Enchantée!   I so enjoyed The Artificial Parisienne, with its beguiling evocation of the streets, gardens and cemeteries of Paris down the centuries.   From Marie Antoinette to Alice B. Toklas, a baguette bagatelle and recipe for pain arabe to a ‘Balade of the Fallen’, the collection delicately conjures the city’s complex histories and ghosts, including – often with a pinch of wry – the poet’s own dreaming phantom.
Felicitations Sue Burge!   Naomi Foyle

In this startling new collection, Sue Burge explores both the Paris of the alter ego she left there over thirty years ago, and her edgy current relationship with Paris, in poems which are an intense psycho-geographic evocation of the city of her obsessive dreams.

 

You can buy signed copies of The Artificial Parisienne from Sue: £14 inc. p & p in the UK; £15 inc. p & p for the EU. Just contact Sue via e-mail, email hidden; JavaScript is required to purchase your copy.

Alternatively, you can buy the book directly from Live Canon at the following link:
www.livecanon.co.uk/store/product/the-artificial-parisienne-sue-burge
 

Go HERE to read some of the poems

 
 

Confetti Dancers

If you would like a signed copy of Confetti Dancers then please contact Sue. The price is £11.70 including p&p.
Special Offer:   In the Kingdom of Shadows and Confetti Dancers for £16.70 including p&p.

Click here to read three poems from Confetti Dancers.

 
In the 1980s Sue Burge worked at the Royal Academy of Dancing and witnessed the effect of AIDS on the world of dance.   Confetti Dancers investigates her memories of this era.   It begins with a mythic, psycho-geographic journey to Russia and Eastern Europe where dancers feature amidst a wider cast of brides, witches, film-makers and lovers before moving to a very different poetic landscape to explore the intimacy and universality of loss.

“The mythological and the very real collide in this startling and profoundly moving collection by Sue Burge.   Subjects as diverse as modern Russia, the AIDS epidemic among ballet dancers in the eighties, family history and lockdown are skilfully woven together — managing to walk a delicate line between the profoundly personal and the worldly.   This is a collection that reaches inside you and twists you up.   These poems spoke to me and changed me a little — which is what a good collection should do.   Burge does not shy away from the difficult stuff, but there is an optimism here too, that shines through and left me with an overarching sense of hope.”
Julia Webb
 
“This is a fascinating, riveting, stunning collection.   Chills, vertigo, tears of joy and deep marrow.   Sue has delivered an open-heart selfie with unashamed intimacy and masterful craft.”
Craig Martin Getz

 

The Saltwater Diaries


Sue is delighted to announce that her second pamphlet, The Saltwater Diaries, published by Hedgehog Poetry Press is now available.   The pamphlet explores Sue’s personal relationship with the sea.
Contact Sue for payment details.   The total cost is £9.53 which includes postage and packing for UK addresses and a signed copy of the book (retailing at £7.99).
Special Offer — Lumiere (£5.99) and The Saltwater Diaries (£7.99) buy both for the bargain price of £12.50 including postage and packing (UK only).

“Richly atmospheric poems of snarl and fang with a dark, story-like quality that explore the relationship between sea and self — each one an alternative portrait, each one a linguistically rich inquisition of nature and existence that dredges past and present, excavating unexpected treasures.   This is a pamphlet with ballast and intent that sails the warp and weft of the tides.”
Paul Stephenson

“Sue Burge’s ‘The Saltwater Diaries‘ is a beautiful evocation of all that is special about the coast, perfectly capturing the taste of salt on the wind and the life that is often undiscovered beneath rocks, along beaches and dancing in the air.   This is a stunning collection of small pebbles that together can form mountains.”
Mark Davidson, Hedgehog Poetry Press

“I deeply enjoy Sue’s cinematic landscapes, filled with crystalline images, her heartfelt honesty & humility, as well as her gift for linguistically-inventive lyricism.”
David Leo Sirois, Spoken World Online

Sue Burge is a seasoned chronicler serving her readers with bitter sweet paradoxical morning soups, throat scalding metaphoric crank, nerve-jamming and mind spinning metaphor spiced beverages.
Mbizo Chirasa (Time of the Poet Republic)

If you would like to hear Sue read a poem from The Saltwater Diaries, go here:
Hazelpress.co.uk

 
 

Lumière


I am delighted to announce that my pamphlet, Lumière, is now available from Hedgehog Poetry Press.

Alternatively, you can order a signed copy of the pamphlet directly from me for £5.99 plus £1.50 p&p.   Contact Sue to find out how to do this.

Praise for Lumière:
“In her debut pamphlet, Sue Burge has captured the very essence of a Parisian dream.   A residency in Paris allowed Sue the time to immerse herself both in the culture and the history of film centred in the City of Light, a passion for the cinema which she brings to life in Lumière.
Throughout Lumière Sue displays a unique and authentic voice, weaving a rich tapestry of emotions and unveiling an unflinching perspective.   This is a confident and immensely impressive collection with an underlying humanity that richly rewards the reader and leaves you wondering what she will do next.”
Mark Davidson, Hedgehog Poetry Press

“Sue Burge’s Lumière is wonderfully at ease in its own skin in its evocation of Paris and she carries her knowledge of French cinema brilliantly and yet lightly.”
Penelope Shuttle

To read a review of Lumière in the Bangor Literary Journal go to https://thebangorliteraryjournal.com/2019/02/02/download-issue-7-now

 

In the Kingdom of Shadows

 

 

I also have a first collection, In the Kingdom of Shadows, with Live Canon Poetry Press.   Copies of the book (£9.99) are available from Live Canon and from Amazon