Event Photos: The Griffin Poetry Prize gala

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.

Griffin Poetry Prize reaction

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.)

Flickr event roundup: McKay, McKay, and Dowling

Photographers from across the country have been contributing to our new Quill & Quire Flickr Pool. Below is just a sampling of recent additions.

Poet Don McKay – who was just nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize – took to the stage on March 27, 2007 as part of Ottawa’s long-standing Tree Reading Series. Photographed at the Library and Archives by John W. MacDonald.

On the same evening in Toronto, fellow McKay — this time the unrelated Ami — signed books at Knopf Canada’s New Face of Fiction event at the Gladstone Hotel. Also in attendance were this year’s New Faces, Neil Smith and Jen Sookfong Lee. A detailed and fascinating description of the night can be found on photographer Karen (Sassymonkey)’s own blog.

South of the border, Canadian poet Sarah Dowling reads in Philadelphia as part of the March 24 launch of arts journal EOAGH‘s third issue, dubbed “Queering Language.” This photograph was taken by fellow poet Sina Queyras, whose own Flickr account has a sizable collection of Canadian writer and poet portraits.

Have you recently attended a book reading, library event, or author appearance? Have some interesting book-related pictures you want to share? If you’ve got photos of the Canadian book scene, we’d love to see them. Send them to us or sign up through Flickr and submit your images.

Breaking down the Griffin

Toronto writer Barbara Carey has a piece on the CBC Arts site today that runs down the contenders for this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize. But perhaps most notable for Carey is what is not in the lists for the Canadian and international prizes. She writes: “What’s immediately striking about this year’s finalists is that lyric narrative, arguably the most dominant form of poetry in English, is conspicuously absent. Instead, the judges — Britain’s Lavinia Greenlaw, Eliot Weinberger of the United States and Vancouver-based Lisa Robertson — have opted for work that’s non-linear, often flamboyantly unconventional and far ranging in cultural references.”

Related links:
Click here for the CBC Arts story

Sonnets, ghazals, and glosas, oh my!

Over on Bookninja.com, there’s a lively discussion about the renewal of interest in form among Canadian poets. Contributing to the “essay-in-conversation” are poets Ian LeTourneau and John Lofranco, and their back-and-forth ranges over the work of several of their fellow writers. For example, LeTourneau praises Anne Simpson’s recent work in the sonnet form (in her Griffin Poetry Prize-winning collection, Loop), while Lofranco finds it “disjointed, contrived and sentimental.”

Related links:
Click here for the Bookninja.com discussion