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.

Daily book biz round-up: Starbucks books; Ian Tyson cashes in; and more

Today’s book news:

• Starbucks teams with iBookstore for new Wi-Fi digital network
• Ian Tyson says he wrote new memoir solely “for the money”
• College students still love expensive, back-breaking textbooks, says NY Times
• Is there a new Nook coming? And does anyone care?
• Harvard Bookstore launches bicycle delivery program

Daily book biz round-up: Target to sell Kindle; props to Galchen and Bezmozgis; and more

Browse and click!

• Canadians Rivka Galchen and David Bezmozgis make The New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 list
• New copyright legislation gets tough about breaking digital encryption locks
• Target to become first brick-and-mortar retailer to sell Kindle
• Simon & Schuster U.S. publisher David Rosenthal gets the ol’ heave-ho
• Follett of Canada to begin renting textbooks to college students
• Indie booksellers in U.K. find yet more reasons to be mad at Amazon

Free speech advocates defend anthology about teen homosexuality

Egypt is not the only place where authors run afoul of censorship. It also happens with distressing regularity in the so-called Land of the Free to Canada’s south. In the latest instance, the New Jersey chapter of conservative pundit Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project has succeeded in getting an anthology of writing and art focusing on teen homosexuality removed from Rancocas Valley Regional High School. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, 9.12 member and local grandmother Beverley Marinelli challenged the book Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology for being “pervasively vulgar, obscene, and inappropriate.”

Marinelli might have a fight on her hands. An article in the Guardian claims the issue has galvanized free speech and pro-GLBT organizations, which are rallying in support of Revolutionary Voices and two other books Marinelli’s group is attempting to get banned:

“There are undoubtedly GLBTQ [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning] students at Rancocas Valley High School, regardless of whether they are openly recognised. Removing any of these titles would send a clear message to those students that they are the objects of social disapproval – different, vulnerable, and marginal – whose needs for information of particular relevance to their lives are not respected,” wrote the directors of a collection of organisations to the school’s board. The letter, the signatories to which include the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN America, added that there was “no question that these books are not obscene.”

Marnielli, who insists that she “is not a homophobe,” is also trying to get Revolutionary Voices removed from the Lenape Regional High School District, New Jersey’s largest high school district.

When not trying to ban books, Marinelli spends her time protesting “indoctrination” of vulnerable American youth. The Philadelphia Inquirer points out that she recently participated in a demonstration at New Jersey’s B. Bernice Young Elementary School after seeing a video of schoolchildren singing a song praising U.S. president Barack Obama.

She told the Philadelphia Daily News: “We did it for the children.”

Atwood takes home (half a) million-dollar prize

Margaret Atwood has won the Dan David Prize for “Literature: Rendition of the 20^th Century.” The Canadian author will share the $1 million (U.S.) prize with Indian author Amitav Ghosh, and each winner will share 10% of the winnings with graduate students working in literature.

The Dan David Prize is presented annually by Tel Aviv University in Israel, and includes winners in three categories: Past, Present, and Future (Atwood and Ghosh will share the prize for the Present category). A different discipline is chosen annually for each category, and this year’s literature prize honours the two novelists for providing “vivid, compelling, and groundbreaking depictions of 20th century life, rousing public discussion and inspiring fellow writers.” Here’s what was said specifically of Atwood’s work:

Her work enabled, for the first time, the emergence of a defined Canadian identity, while exploring both national and transnational issues, such as colonization, feminism, structures of political power and oppression, and the violation and exploitation of nature. She is the creator of a wide range of original fiction in which realism, myth, and parable are skillfully united.

Former laureates of the Dan David Prize include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (in 2009, for leadership); former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore (in 2008, for social responsibility); and Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (in 2008, for creative rendering of the past). Atwood and the rest of the 2010 winners will be honoured at a ceremony on May 9 at Tel Aviv University.

Bookmarks: Going Rogue mistakes, aliens and werewolves, Xbox Bibles, and more

A few bookish links from around the Web:

• Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir hits shelves today. Palin tells Oprah in an unused clip from yesterday’s interview that “logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a real difficult exercise to write the book” (via GalleyCat) 
• The Associated Press has compiled a list of the errors found in Going Rogue
• Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight empire series, also sat on Oprah’s couch in a rare public appearance last Friday. In an unused clip (via Entertainment Weekly), Meyer admits to being “a little burned out by vampires” and says that she “may go spend some time with … aliens.” 
• For those of you sick of everything vampire, Bookgasm offers a werewolf alternative in David Wellington’s Frostbite 
• The New Oxford American Dictionary‘s Word of the Year is “unfriend,” which is defined as: “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”  Runners-up for the title included “hashtag,” “sexting,” “teabagger,” and “tramp stamp”
• The future is digital: the National Post reports that students at Toronto’s Blyth Academy will all receive a Sony Reader to replace those stuffy old textbooks of yore 
• How would you like your Bible?  Handwritten or on your Xbox? 

Burned holy books to be symbolically buried, maybe

In the Israel-Palestine conflict, symbolism is everything. And there is a small tussle going on right now that is so heavy with symbolism, it might as well be an Ingmar Bergman film. At issue is a set of Jewish holy books that were allegedly burned by a group of Arabs. The books were being studied by Homesh Tehila (“Homesh First”), an Israeli group looking to re-establish a settlement that had been dismantled by the Israeli government. They had been maintaining an ad hoc yeshiva (a kind of school) on the site of the former settlement.

Unfiltered information about this kind of thing is difficult to come by (hence our hedging in the title of this post), but Homesh Tehila alleges that Arabs raided the yeshiva and burned the books a few weeks ago, and plans were afoot to bury the texts as part of a, well, highly symbolic ceremony.

From the The Jerusalem Post:

According to David Ha’ivri, a spokesman for the Samaria Regional Council, one night when there was no guard, local Arabs broke into the yeshiva and “burned to ashes” the holy books studied by the students.

In a press release, Ha’ivri juxtaposed the fire created by the burned holy books with the spiritual fire kindled by the yeshiva students’ learning.

(The ceremony, by the way, appears to have been postponed after some of its leaders were threatened with arrest.)

Arrr! J.K. Rowling and John Grisham fall victim to pirates

Two of the planet’s bestselling authors, J.K. “I’ll kick Stephenie Meyer’s ass” Rowling and John Grisham, are among several authors whose books have apparently been illegally uploaded to a San Francisco-based website that promotes itself as “YouTube for books.” Scribd.com was launched by a couple of twentysomething Harvard students, and has since become an attraction for a reported 55 million visitors each month. While the site boasts a number of legal uses – the Obama campaign used it to upload policy material and thereby sidestep media filters – it now looks to have succumbed to the “Napster effect,” whereby copyrighted works are uploaded without permission and distributed for free.

An article in The Times online reports:

A search of Scribd by The Times yesterday found copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Ken Follett’s most recent novel World Without End among many bestselling titles, raising fears that the piracy affecting the music industry may have spread to books.

When presented with a list of links to various Harry Potter books, Neil Blair, J. K. Rowling’s lawyer at the Christopher Little literary agency, said that Scribd did not have permission “and what you have identified are infringing listings which we were aware of and actioning”.

The online culture of disseminating information online for free (Quillblog finds it interesting that the word “crib” appears in Scribd’s name) has also been taken on recently by The Globe and Mail‘s Peter Scowen. Scowen writes that the culture of “free” threatens the traditional means by which authors and other content creators earn their living, which seems irrefutable, but it’s open to debate as to whether the solution is to rage against the machine or try to adapt traditional methods of doing business to the new reality.

Scowen’s specific target is the upcoming Book Summit, “Giving It Away: Books, Business, and the Culture of Free.” The conference, sponsored by Humber College and the Book and Periodical Council, is an opportunity for publishers, writers, booksellers, and other interested parties to “learn about the opportunities, the pitfalls, the marketing techniques, the delivery methods, the creators, the readers” that can be tapped by properly utilizing the “culture of free.” The cost of the summit is $145.

Michael Crichton dies

Online news outlets are buzzing this afternoon with the news that Michael Crichton has died. According to the Toronto Star, the 66-year-old author of mega-sellers like Jurassic Park and Timeline passed away yesterday after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Crichton was a brand-name author, known for his stories of disaster and systematic breakdown, such as the rampant microbe of The Andromeda Strain or dinosaurs running amok in Jurassic Park, one of his many books that became major Hollywood movies.

“Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand,” his family said in a statement.

The piece also states that a new novel was tentatively scheduled to come out next month from HarperCollins, but that it had been postponed indefinitely because of his illness.

School board superintendent not anti-gay … says school board superintendent

Last week, Quillblog pointed to a CBC story about a Charlotte County, New Brunswick school board that rescinded an invitation to openly gay author Alex Sanchez to speak to high school students in their district after receiving complaints from intolerant jackalopes local parents. Today, the CBC reports that Sanchez was allowed to speak to area high-school students, but only after the venue was changed to a church in St. Andrews.

Keith Pierce, the school superintendent who originally extended the invitation to Sanchez, said the decision to cancel his appearance resulted in a flood of e-mails from across Canada accusing Pierce and the school principals involved of being anti-gay, a charge that Pierce denies:

“I’m not anti-gay,” Pierce told CBC News on Wednesday. “We’re for all students and meeting their needs,” he said. “But there’s always going to be a debate about the role of schools and dealing with moral issues that are really sensitive,” Pierce said.

It appears that Pierce himself may have had a road-to-Damascus moment after listening to Sanchez speak. Asked if he would recommend the author as a speaker in the future, the CBC quotes Pierce as saying, “Oh absolutely. Definitely. Now that I’ve heard him, he’s wonderful. But I needed to hear that message.” Quillblog notes the irony here, but is pleased that Pierce, and local students, eventually got that chance.