Thursday, February 26, 2009

OH BASIC GOODNESS DOES NOT GO UP AND DOWN WITH THE STOCK MARKET!!!


and how good is that? Very good indeed. For those of you who may have missed the announcement by Shelagh Rogers on Q - the most marvellous news - fantastically talented and fabulously kind
Sue Goyette
has won FIRST prize (out of a field of over 400 entrants!) in the poetry division of the
CBC Literary Awards for her poem collection entitled 'Outskirts'.
So let's see: Obama won the US presidency, a movie about the true and hard struggles of earth's children swept the oscars and Goyette won the poetry prize. And how do these things connect? And what do they have to do with basic goodness? Warm is the new cool, dear reader. Love is the new black. Heart is the new thin. And that is all I can say because I'm still weak. Listen to Shelagh Rogers when she interviews Sue on Saturday afternoon. ah....
here is a bit from the site itself:

Poetry First Prize - English OUTSKIRTS Sue Goyette, Halifax, NS
Sue Goyette has published two books of poems: The True Names of Birds (Brick Books) and Undone (Brick Books) and has been nominated for the Governor General's Award, the Pat Lowther Award, the Gerald Lampert Award, the Atlantic Poetry Award and the Dartmouth Book Award. Her novel, Lures (HarperCollins) was short-listed for the Thomas Head Radall Atlantic Fiction Award. She lives in Halifax and is currently renovating an old house and writing in a new room. She teaches creative writing at Dalhousie University and leads a workshop for teenage writers at Alderney Gate Public Library. She also participates in the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia's Mentorship and Writers in the Schools programs.

Jury’s comments:“In selecting “Outskirts,” the jury recognized the artistry of form and voice evident in the poet’s handling of extended metaphor and lineation. Through a series of radically shifting perspectives, the poet undertakes a strikingly original meditation on the intersection between the mundanity of the personal and vastness of the cosmological. We are brought to the very limits of our assumptions where we are able to see the world anew.”

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