The Exiles' Gallery

Elise Partridge’s The Exiles' Gallery extends the range of her widely acclaimed earlier books, Fielder’s Choice and Chameleon Hours, praised as "first-rate" by James Pollock for their "authenticity" by Stephanie Bolster, and "brilliant precisions that reflect life's plenitude" by Rosanna Warren. This new book presents moving portraits of a gallery of characters from North America, from homeless men to a wildlife illustrator, from a mother struggling to pay the rent to a generous stove repairman. Poems that skewer the vanities and complacency of the powerful sit alongside works about loss, love, and resilience written from the author's perspective as a cancer patient. Stephen Burt has compared Partridge's "impressive poems" to Elizabeth Bishop's. With her “flawless ear” (Jacqueline Osherow) and “pitch-perfect verse” (Ken Babstock), Partridge reveals again the “unfeigned passion” and “ardent, compassionate, and unsentimental vision” that have made her books “thrilling, memorable.” (Robert Pinsky)

Elise Partridge’s Fielder’s Choice was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poems in Canada; Chameleon Hours was shortlisted for the BC Book Prize, won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award, and was featured in the Washington Post “Poet’s Choice” column. Her work has been anthologized in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., and has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, Slate, Yale Review, Southwest Review, PN Review, The Walrus, and The New Republic.