Scott Griffin brings poetry into Canadian schools

Canadian literary benefactor Scott Griffin is taking his passion for poetry – in particular, the live recitation of poetry – into schools across Canada with a new bilingual recitation contest that will award $10,000 to students and school libraries.

Griffin announced the initiative, known as Poetry in Voice, at a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday. A pilot program is currently underway at a dozen Ontario high schools, and the plan is to expand to Quebec in 2011–12 and across the country in 2012–13.

Griffin, who recites a favourite poem from memory at each annual Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist announcement, spoke of the importance of recitation in discovering poetry. “The best way to know a poem short of writing it is to memorize it,” he said. “It’s amazing how different emotional settings or scenes will resurrect that particular poem because it strikes exactly what you’re experiencing at the time.”

Griffin wants to change the negative attitude many people have toward the rote memorization of poetry. “We hope this program … will excite students to want to memorize [poetry], and then they will discover the value of the poem,” he said.

Students participating in the pilot program can choose three poems from an online anthology that currently comprises more than 100 English-language and 25 French-language poems in the public domain, as selected by Poetry in Voice director Damian Rogers (author of the collection Paper Radio, published by ECW Press) and three-time Governor General’s Literary Award–winning poet Pierre Nepveu.

According to Rogers, the contest will serve as a platform for bringing Canadian literature and contemporary poets into schools. “I want students to make the connection that poetry is part of the Canadian cultural landscape across the country,” said Rogers, who added that the group is currently in the process of securing rights to contemporary and Canadian poems.

Competing students will be judged according to a variety of criteria, including physical presence, voice and articulation, accuracy, and dramatization. Griffin says students who choose to recite at least one poem in their non-native tongue will have a slight advantage over other competitors.

The province-wide finalists will face off on April 12 at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre, with the winning student receiving $5,000, plus an additional $2,500 for the student’s school library. The runner-up will receive $1,000 (plus $500 for the library), while the third-place student will receive $500 (plus $500 for the library).

In addition to the $10,000 earmarked for the Poetry in Voice program, the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry will hand out $200,000 to the nominees of the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Griffin fever!

The 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize will be handed out at a ceremony in Toronto this evening. Verse lovers are making bets on who will take home the world’s most lucrative award for a collection of poetry in English. One prize honours a Canadian poet, and another is awarded to an international poet.  This year the prize money has increased from $50,000 to $65,000 for both recipients, with each shortlisted author receiving $10,000.

The Canadian shortlist includes debut collection The Certainty Dream by Kate Hall (Coach House Books). The judges wrote in their citation: “I like the feeling her poems give that as we read them we are amidst an actual process of thought.” The book is regarded as a long-shot by some, as a first collection has yet to win a Griffin.

Coal and Roses by the late P.K. Page (Porcupine’s Quill), is a collection of 21 glosas by the iconic poet. “How heartening to be reminded that creativity, zest and curiosity can endure, even flourish, into great old age,” wrote the judges. Page’s collection Planet Earth was nominated for the Griffin in 2003, and some are speculating the 2010 award will go to her in part to honour her considerable life’s work.

Pigeon (House of Anansi Press) is Karen Solie’s third collection of poetry.  This is Solie’s second Griffin nomination, and some surmise this one might secure a win. From the judge’s citation: “Among the greatest of Solie’s talents, evident throughout the poems of Pigeon, is an ability to see at once into and through our daily struggle, often thwarted by our very selves, toward something like an honourable life.”

Over a thousand people attended last night’s Griffin readings at the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning. American poet Adrienne Rich was awarded the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s Lifetime Recognition Award.

The judges for this year’s prize are Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie, and Carl Phillips.

Helen Dunmore wins £5,000 National Poetry Competition

Who says poetry doesn’t pay? This year’s winner of the U.K.’s National Poetry Competition has been announced, and the £5,000 prize goes to … an Orange Prize–winning novelist and poet. Helen Dunmore, author of dozens of books, including 2008’s Counting the Stars, entered her poem “The Malarkey” at the last minute, just before the competition deadline. Dunmore describes her entry in the Guardian:

It’s quite a tightly organized poem, in terms of the rhymes and the near-rhymes. It’s very much about containment … I’ve written very few poems over the past four years … but now I have the feeling that there is the kernel of a new collection. It is a great boost to receive the prize – a confirmation.

The National Poetry Competition was founded by the Poetry Society in 1978. This year, there were more than 10,000 entries. “If there is an unspoken Grand Slam circuit for poetry prizes, then the National Poetry Competition is definitely Wimbledon – it’s the one everyone dreams of winning,” poet Christopher James told the Guardian when he won in 2009. This year’s second prize winner of £1,000 was Ian Pindar, whose debut poetry collection, Emporium, will be published in 2011, while the third prize of £500 went to John Stammerstook, whose third collection will be released next month.

Here’s a peek at the winning poem, which can be read in full at the Guardian:

Why did you tell them to be quiet
and sit up straight until you came back?
The malarkey would have led you to them.

You go from one parked car to another
and peer through the misted windows
before checking the registration.

Is Carol Ann Duffy Britain’s new Poet Laureate?

The Independent seems to think so. They are reporting that Duffy’s name has been sent to the Queen for approval, and that her appointment is so certain that bookies have stopped taking bets on her (the closest thing to a slam-dunk in Britain). If confirmed, Duffy would not only become the first woman to serve as Poet Laureate, but the first openly gay woman, at that.

Her appointment to succeed outgoing Poet Laureate Andrew Motion would not be uncontroversial. According to the Independent:

Her popularity has grown on the back of her becoming a stalwart if occasionally controversial feature of the school curriculum. Last year she found herself at the centre of a censorship row after her poem “Education For Leisure,” which examines a young boy’s fascination with street crime, was dropped by an exam body. She narrowly missed out to Motion when he was appointed Laureate in 1999 because the then Prime Minister Tony Blair felt her sexuality would prove unacceptable to Middle England. She was said to have been left deeply bruised and declared herself “out of the picture” for any future contest, later excoriating the idea of writing a poem for Prince Edward and his bride Sophie, the creation of verse to mark royal nuptials being part of a Laureate’s work.

Duffy has apparently had a change of heart, and is now willing to accept the post. This puts her in opposition to fellow poet Wendy Cope, a former favourite to succeed Motion, who recently suggested that the position of Poet Laureate should be abolished.

Calling all poets 35 and under…

Authors at Harbourfront Centre, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, is inviting submissions for an open stage night on Wednesday, March 25.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an “open” event without a list of eligibility requirements:

• Entrants must be under 35 (“like us,” according to the festival’s website).
• They must have at least one book of poems published by a trade publisher (no self-publishing)  under their own name (no anthologies).
• The book must be currently in print.

So basically, for Toronto-based (published) poets (under 35) it sounds like a decent deal: submit your name, be entered in a draw, and 20 poets will be randomly chosen to read for five minutes each. The winner will appear at the International Festival of Authors in October.

Submissions are due (and should be made by an author’s publishing representative) by February 25 at noon.

Bookmarks: Ben McNally, Al Purdy, and Britney

• Toronto bookseller Ben McNally is profiled at blogTO.
• The League of Canadian Poets has “declared” April 21 to be National Al Purdy Day. Says their release (which doesn’t seem to be online): “We invite all Canadian poets, and lovers of Canadian poetry to host a Purdy Party to raise funds to preserve this important cultural and heritage property.” (More on the “Let’s save Al Purdy’s house” movement here.)
• From the sublime to the etc., etc.: U.K. paper claims Britney Spears has signed deal to write series (!) of memoirs. No further comment.
• Some info on Q and A (the novel on which Best Picture Oscar nominee Slumdog Millionaire is based).

Poetry awards and conflict of interest (not what you think…)

Apparently, Canada isn’t the only place where poets get their dander up about awards and perceived conflict of interest. The New York Times’ Paper Cuts blog points out a particularly vitriolic exchange in the Telegraph between Jascha Kessler, a poet who was passed over for the Yale Younger Poets award in 1956 (and apparently harbours a long-standing grudge.) Kessler was one of 12 finalists for the prize, which was adjudicated by W.H. Auden. The prize was eventually won by John Ashbery, who is, erm, slightly better known nowadays than Kessler.

According to the loser erstwhile finalist, Auden chose Ashbery – who was not among the dirty dozen, but whose work the elder poet specifically requested for consideration – due to a combination of what Paper Cuts calls “anti-Semitism” and “homophilia.” (Describing a bizarre dinner party he, Auden, and Ashbery attended in the 1950s, Kessler suggests that Auden made comments “about the Will-to-Live he thought innate in the Jew per se, that inner strength needed for survival, and such bosh,” and goes on to write, “What with Ashbery’s mewling, mincing manner and self-deprecatory modesty, his very speech manifested the goy gay persona par excellence.”)

No shrinking violet, Ashbery lashed back at Kessler the following week (December 3), calling the other author “seriously delusional,” and stating that Auden was uncomfortable with the prize’s vetting process, because he felt that many of the poets who were chosen as finalists were unworthy of recognition. Ashbery closes his letter with an example of the “self-deprecatory modesty” about which Kessler wrote:

As for John Ashbery, his manuscript had indeed been weeded out, along with that of another New York poet, Frank O’Hara. Auden contacted them both and asked that they re-submit their work directly to him. He received the manuscripts in little more than a week and made up his mind within days. The winner was Ashbery, salvaged from the slush pile to become in time one of the best-known poets the Yale series has ever published.

Dissing God

Publicists take note: Sometimes the best way to lift a book out of obscurity is by harnessing the tireless outrage of religious fundamentalists.

The Guardian’s Alison Flood is reporting how a group of Christian extremists is focusing its ire on a profanity-laced collection of poetry, which otherwise would almost certainly have been overlooked by the British press.

Christian activists are due to stage a protest outside the Welsh Assembly tomorrow over Patrick Jones’s poetry collection Darkness Is Where the Stars Are, which they describe as “ugly, indecent and blasphemous.”

Jones is scheduled to read his poetry at the Assembly’s T Hywel building tomorrow at 12pm, but the group Christian Voice – which has already successfully campaigned against Jones launching his work at Waterstone’s Cardiff branch last month – is planning “a public act of Christian witness” outside the building.

The book in question, published by the innocuously named Cinnamon Press, alludes to carnal relations between Jesus and Mary Magdalene and contains the blasphemous assertion that “god does not die because he was never alive.” Apparently, it represents the culmination of two decades of work by Jones, who was formerly most famous for his ties to the band Manic Street Preachers.

Ironically, the mastermind behind the protests is urging members to commit some very un-Christian-like acts of deceit:

“Say how much you would like an invitation to the event, but don’t say you wish to protest!” the organisation said in an email. “Say whatever is needed to get alongside and get a ticket without bearing false witness. You cannot give a false name for either event as ID will be required. So Onward, Christian soldiers, Stand up, stand up for Jesus!”

GG poetry dust-up continues

The controversy surrounding this year’s Governor General’s Award for poetry continues apace. Yesterday, the Toronto Star devoted some ink to the story. And today, on his blog, poet (and frequent Q&Q reviewer) Zachariah Wells has posted the official conflict-of-interest guidelines used by the Canada Council in selecting jury members, which makes it seem pretty clear that jurors Di Brandt and Pier Giorgio Di Cicco should never have been invited to participate.

A lawyer friend of Wells’, however, argues that there is some wiggle room in the wording.

Public consulted about U.K. poet laureate

The search for the next U.K. poet laureate — Andrew Motion‘s successor — began today, with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport inviting the public to make suggestions for who the next versifier should be.

From the Guardian:

This is the first time the public has been consulted about the poet laureateship. Although the DCMS has said there would be no official public vote, this appeal does seem to make it more likely that the next laureate will be a more obviously populist choice than Motion.

“It’s true there would be an opportunity to appoint someone who is remote, shamanistic and lives on the top of a mountain,” said Motion. “There would be the chance to appoint someone who cranks the handle regularly and turns out poems that are more closely aligned to ditties than perhaps they have been in the past, but my hunch is, and my support would go to, the choice of someone who is able to move fairly fluently between the high ground and more populist things.”

The criteria state that the incumbent’s work must be of “national significance”.

So far, no suggestions have come in, save for one from John Worthingham of Wimpole Street, who nominated his pet cat Chauncey, and was thus disqualifed.

(Speaking of ditties, national “significance,” and public suggestions, this Quillblogger just had a disturbing vision of Ali G., the Spice Girls, and Monty Python all with their hats in the ring.)

Motion got the job in May 1999, and in his ten years as laureate has written poems for the 100th birthday and death of the Queen Mother, and founded the Poetry Archive — an online collection of poets reading their work.