Elise Partridge

Poet and editor Elise Partridge was educated at Harvard University, Boston University, Cambridge University, and the University of British Columbia. She is the author of the poetry collections Fielder’s Choice (2002) and Chameleon Hours (2008), which won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award. Her poems have also been featured on Garrison Keillor’s NPR program The Writer’s Almanac. Partridge’s poems, in the words of critic Stephen Burt, “pursue a careful thinker’s yearning for abandon.” As Burt observed, “Attentive to fact, to what she sees and knows, Partridge nonetheless makes space for what is wild, outside and within us—.” Partridge has served as poet-in-residence for Arc magazine and was a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Her husband, Stephen Partridge, is a professor of medieval literature at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Source

For a Father

Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard,

crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge;

wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam,

you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge?

We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait!

Or that August night you swept us to the fair?

The tallest person boarding the Ferris wheel,

you rocked our car right when we hit the apex

above the winking midway, to make us squeal.

Next we raced you to the games, shouting, Wait!

At your funeral, relatives and neighbors,

shaking our hands, said, "So young to have died!"

But we've dreamt you're just skating streets away,

striding the fairgrounds toward a wilder ride.

And we're still straggling behind, shouting, Wait—!

Published:

2008

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Childhood & Coming of Age

Death & Loss

Family

Memory & The Past