League Awards
THE LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETS CONGRATULATES THE WINNERS OF THE PAT LOWTHER AND GERALD LAMPERT AWARDS
The winners of the 2010 Pat Lowther and Gerald Lampert Memorial Awards were announced on Saturday. June 12, at a special event at the LCP Poetry Fest and Conference held in Toronto. James Langer is the winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the book Gun Dogs (House of Anansi Press) and Karen Solie has won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Pigeon (House of Anansi Press)
The shortlist for this year’s awards:
Gerald Lampert:
The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award is given in the memory of Gerald Lampert, an arts administrator who organized authors' tours and took a particular interest in the work of new writers. The award recognizes the best first book of poetry published by a Canadian in the preceding year. The award carries a $1,000 prize.
Kate Hall for The Certainty Dream(Coach House Books)
James Langer for Gun Dogs (House of Anansi Press)
Marcus McCann for Soft Where (Chaudiere Books)
Soraya Mariam Peerbaye for Poems for the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (Goose Lane Editions)
Marguerite Pigeon for Inventory (Anvil Press)
Robert Earl Stewart for Something Burned Along the Southern Border (Mansfield Press)
2010 Jury: Barbara Pelman, David Seymour, Sheri-D Wilson
Judges Comments:
Gun Dogs by James Langer, is a remarkable debut collection. The temptation is to quote huge pieces of these poems, to show off Langer’s dexterity with language, its “thrust and load and drag”, the cleverness of “Half Full”, the intimacy of voice in “Home Suite”, the accomplished play on the Anglo-Saxon poem “Seafarer”. The poems in Gun Dogs range in style from free verse to blank verse to sonnet, quatrains and couplets. Their subject matter is the get-down-and-dirty of ordinary life on the backroads, the bars, the trout-filled rivers and open sea as well as the urban landscapes. Yet there is the whole history of the poetry tradition in these poems: metrical rhythms mixed with references to Pound and F.R. Scott, Ondaatje and Dante. Here is a poet who is sure of his craft, and whose work it is a pleasure to reread again and again.
Pat Lowther:
The Pat Lowther Memorial Award is given for a book of poetry by a Canadian woman published in the preceding year, and is in memory of the late Pat Lowther, whose career was cut short by her untimely death in 1975. The award carries a $1,000 prize.
Elizabeth Bachinsky for God of Missed Connections (Nightwood Editions)
Ronna Bloom for Permiso (Pedlar Press)
Sina Queyras for Expressway (Coach House Books)
Damian Rogers for Paper Radio (ECW Press, a misFit book)
Laisha Rosnau for Lousy Exploriers (Nightwood Editions)
Karen Solie for Pigeon (House of Anansi Press)
2010 Jury: Gloe Cormie, Maureen Hynes, Rhea Tregebov
Judges Comments:
Pigeon is a collection of remarkable complexity and depth, its range of tone and subject matter astonishing, its technical achievement stunning. Its poems bear reading and rereading. Each subsequent reading offers further gifts to the reader, greater clarity to our bemusement and greater bemusement to any clarity we might have had. Solie’s work engages profoundly with the world: she writes an ode to the Buhler Versatile 2360 tractor, one to wild horses, and one to the women who clean downtown office towers. The richness of this book lies in the intelligence of Solie’s engagement, the multiplicity of voice in which it is expressed.
Congratulations to all the authors, and many thanks to the jurors for their hard work on this year’s awards!
Media Contact:
Renu Mehta
Tel: 416-708-2537 Email: renum@rogers.com
www.poets.ca / www.youngpoets.ca
Author bios and judges' comments:
Winners of the 2010 Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Awards
Gerald Lampert Memorial Awards Author Bios and Judges' Comments
Pat Lowther Memorial Awards Author Bios and Judges' Comments
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