Cormorant Books is set to launch a new poetry line, according to a press release sent out earlier today. Beginning in spring 2011, the Toronto-based publisher will release four poetry titles per year.

The new line will be overseen by Montreal-based poet Robyn Sarah, who has been published by Cormorant, as well as Biblioasis, The Porcupine’s Quill, and House of Anansi Press. Of the four annual titles, at least two will be new works by living poets and at least one will be an anthology or new edition of an out-of-print work.

Cormorant stated it is particuarly interested in “new manuscripts from poets under 35 who have already published at least one book, but we are open to poets at all stages and from all walks of life.”

Sarah said in the release that she is drawn to “poems that have lasting resonance, that invite re-reading and reading aloud, that balance sound with sense, and that go beyond mere personal biography or the topicalities of the day to evoke universal human questions and emotions.”

Cormorant began in 1987 with the publication of a work of poetry. The company’s decision to return to its roots “was inspired in no small measure by the success of the Griffin Prize for Poetry, which has raised the profile of and appreciation for this important genre in the reading public’s imagination.”

Sundry links from around the Web:

• Google announces that its online e-book service, known as Google Editions, will launch sometime in the first half of 2010. According to a report on CNET, Google will take a 37% cut on titles sold through its own website; for books sold through a third party – such as Amazon – the publisher would get a mere 45%
• Delivering the keynote at Frankfurt’s TOC conference, Cory Doctorow says that the publishing industry is bent on destroying itself through a restrictive approach to copyright
• The jurors for the 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize are: Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie, and Carl Phillips

Given the recent furor over the Oxford professor of poetry post, not to mention the hefty sums handed out to A.F. Moritz and C.D. Wright at the Griffin Poetry Prize ceremony last week, it might seem counterintuitive to argue that people feel antipathetic toward what Chaucer called “the craft so long to lerne.” But that’s precisely what Harry Eyres did in this weekend’s Financial Times online.

Beginning with the notion that the recent controversy in Britain exemplifies “much more nervousness and discomfort about the cardinal art form than genuine understanding and love,” Eyres goes on:

It might be better to ask ourselves why, on the whole, we hate poetry – that is to say why we ruthlessly marginalise it and exile it to a cold place of almost total neglect – than to utter dishonest platitudes about how great it is.

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Poetry is up against it in all sorts of ways. Unlike video games, reality television, amateur dance troupes, it is not a cultural phenomenon that is generally welcomed into people’s lives. But what could it do for us, if we would allow it?

What indeed? In response, Quillblog would like to direct Eyres’s attention to the words of James Wood, the critic for The New Yorker, and not exactly a literary slouch, who had this to say at the Griffin awards last week:

Poetry waves a flower in the face of a highly utilitarian age. That great secular hybrid, pragmatic evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics, is busy telling us that art is a slightly puzzling evolutionary superfluity. Art is defended as “cognitive play,” crucial for the evolutionary development of homo sapiens. Art, for such people, must always somehow be justified. But poetry sings the song of itself, and offers a musical gratuity. Just as no one should have to justify, in pragmatic terms, playing the piano or listening to Bach, so no one should have to justify reading Keats or Wallace Stevens. And I am not making the weak case that poetry evades or exceeds such pragmatic cost-counting, but that it challenges such utilitarianism, makes it doubt itself. It faces down the enemy.

Even when the enemy surfaces in a respected British tabloid.

The 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize gala was held at the Stone Distillery in Toronto last night, and the literary community was out in full force, ready to eat fancy food, drink good wine, dance the night away, and, of course, honour the world’s best poets. For a full report of the event in Q&Q Omni, click here. (Photos courtesy of Julie Wilson, House of Anansi Press.)

Toronto’s A. F. Moritz took home the Canadian prize for his 2008 collection The Sentinel (House of Anansi Press).

Arkansas native C. D. Wright won the international prize for her collection Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon Press).

Scott Griffin, founder and trustee of the prize, lets loose on the dance floor after the awards.

Some reaction to the Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist, unveiled yesterday, is trickling in. The Canadian Press interviews two nominees, Jeramy Dodds and Kevin Connolly, while the National Post has a backgrounder on this year’s selections. Q&Q reviewer and conflict watchdog Zachariah Wells says this is “one of the best Canadian shortlists I’ve seen…. Kudos to Michael Redhill, this year’s Canadian judge.”

Wells does add, however, “Given that the prize is funded by Anansi’s owner, it would have looked a lot better if Redhill had managed to shortlist but one of their books.” And the Toronto Star’s Vit Wagner also notes the Griffin-Anansi link, though he doesn’t exactly press the point after Anansi president Sarah MacLachlan assures him that it’s a non-issue.

Quillblog’s take: it is an appearance of mild conflict, but probably unavoidable. Given Anansi’s commitment to poetry publishing, their titles deserve to be in the running, and if they’re in the running, they’re probably going to turn up on the odd shortlist. (It’s also worth noting that no Anansi title has won in the nine-year history of the prize.)