Confetti Dancers, Sue Burge

£ 10.00

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

Sue Burge

Sue Burge is a freelance creative writing and film studies tutor and writing mentor based in North Norfolk. Her poetry has been widely published and anthologised. Lumière (Hedgehog Poetry Press) Sue’s debut pamphlet, which explores Paris’s cinematic heritage, and her first collection, In the Kingdom of Shadows (Live Canon), were both published in 2018. Her second pamphlet, The Saltwater Diaries (Hedgehog Poetry Press) came out in 2020. This is her second collection.