“Drawing influence from her omnivorous reading, Alice infuses word collages and broken fields of type with lyric feeling. In this debut collection she has curated poems that reflect conditions of lostness. She observes and resists the desire to make logical conclusions, opting instead for phrases, images and voices of anachronism and surprise.”

— Bonny Cassidy

ON VIDEO

Three reimagined poems from The Empty Show.

“Knowledge transfer is fine, but thrillingly coded messages are always a good idea. They are offered here, in Alice Allan’s The Empty Show in plain sight, with helpful bright arrows hovering over the page, superimposed over our collective experiences as a ‘show’ of our intentions. Hidden? Not at all; the sharp/serious/smart/throb of signals and cloud-like ephemera are revealed and translated into ingenious circuitries. With the coverings peeled back, your thoughts are the poems’ thoughts and vice versa. ‘You’re welcome’, says the collection and ‘I’m just getting situated/let me get situated/now let me get SITuated’ ('Venice') say the poems.”

— Melinda Bufton