Suzanne Buffam is a Canadian poet, author of three collections of poetry. Her first, Past Imperfect (House of Anansi Press, 2005), won the Gerald Lampert Award in 2006. Her second, The Irrationalist (Carnarium Books, 2010), was shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her third, A Pillow Book, was published in 2016. Her poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including Poetry, Jubilat, A Public Space, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Books in Canada, and Prairie Schooner; and in anthologies including Breathing Fire: Canada’s New Poets. She earned an MA in English from Concordia University in Montreal, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Born in Montreal and raised in Vancouver, B.C., she lives in Chicago. Buffam was a judge for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize.
I am wearing dark glasses inside the house
To match my dark mood.
I have left all the sugar out of the pie.
...
I was ready for a new experience.
All the old ones had burned out.
They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside
And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields.
...
The last line should strike like a lover's complaint.
You should never see it coming.
And you should never hear the end of it.
...
Fate piles up
On the bloody Norman shore.
If you must swim there
Swim on your back.
...
Little patches of grass disappear
In the jaws of lusty squirrels
Who slip into the spruce.
Cars collapse into parts.
...