This popular poetry competition returns in 2012 to feature some of Canada’s upcoming and established poets.
Each poet will read for 5 minutes and a jury comprising the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award winner for poetry
Phil Hall, Authors at Harbourfront Centre Director
Geoffrey Taylor and Artistic Associate
Jen Tindall will select one author to win an invitation to read at the 33rd annual International Festival of Authors (October 18 to 28, 2012) and have their book advertised in
NOW Magazine.
2012 Participants:
Jonathan Bennett, Linda Besner, Mark Callanan, Ayesha Chatterjee, John Donlan, Catherine Graham, Elizabeth Greene, Alyxandra Harvey, Laurence Hutchman, Maureen Hynes, John B. Lee, Steve Luxton, Anthony M. Pignataro, Sandra Ridley, Jenny Sampirisi, Jennifer Still, Fraser Sutherland, Eva Tihanyi, Daniel Scott Tysdal, and Calvin Wharton.
NOW Magazine's
Susan G. Cole hosts Poetry
NOW.
Poetry
NOW is presented in partnership with
NOW Magazine.
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Jonathan Bennett (Australia/Canada) is the author of two novels, Entitlement and After Battersea Park, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award runner-up collection of short stories, Verandah People. He is a winner of the K.M. Hunter Artists' Award in Literature. His writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Walrus, and Descant, among other periodicals. He reads from his most recent poetry collection, Civil and Civic, in which the contemporary status of civility and civic mindedness are explored through a range of issues in public and private life.
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Toronto-based writer Linda Besner is originally from Wakefield, Quebec. Her poetry and reviews have appeared in the Walrus, Malahat Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, and Canadian Notes and Queries, among other periodicals. Her radio work has aired on CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera, Outfront, and The Next Chapter. Her first collection of poetry, The Id Kid, is a bold and sassy yet deeply emotional collection of wordplay on a wide range of topics and themes.
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Newfoundland-based writer Mark Callanan is the author of Scarecrow and the bpNichol Chapbook Award-winning Sea Legend. His poetry has appeared in several anthologies, including Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets. His most recent publication, Gift Horse, collects a series of poems written mostly following the author’s 2007 near-fatal medical emergency. The collection is steeped in a new-found awareness of mortality and a gratitude for life.
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Born and raised in Kolkata, Ayesha Chatterjee has lived in England, the USA and Germany, and currently resides in Toronto. Her work gained notice when one of her poems was shortlisted in the Guardian Unlimited Poetry Workshop in October 2004. Her poetry has appeared in nthposition, Autumn Sky Poetry and BluSlate. In 2010, she read at the Poetry with Prakriti Festival in Chennai, India. Her first poetry collection, The Clarity of Distance, is a meditation on the complexity of existence and the search for moments of truth within it.
Susan G. Cole is an author, editor and playwright, and longtime on-stage interviewer at the IFOA. She is the entertainment and books editor at NOW Magazine andcan also be heard on the Media and the Message panel every Thursday on Radio Talk 640. Follow her on Twitter @susangcole.
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John Donlan is the author of the poetry collections Domestic Economy, Baysville, and Green Man. In fall 2012 he will be the Barbara Moon Fellow Writer and Editor in Residence at Massey College, University of Toronto. He is a reference librarian at the Vancouver Public Library and a poetry editor with Brick Books. His latest collection of poems, Spirit Engine, draws existential lessons from the power of the natural landscape.
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Toronto-based writer Catherine Graham is the author of four collections of poetry including The Red Element. She completed an M.A. in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in England while living in Northern Ireland. She teaches creative writing, is active in several arts organizations, and designs and delivers workshops on creativity for the business and academic communities. Her latest book of poems, Winterkill, completes a trilogy. The collection takes a stoic and affirming approach to dealing with unsettling topics such as grief, memory, and intimacy.
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Kingston-based writer Elizabeth Greene’s first collection of poems, The Iron Shoes, was published in 2007. Her poetry has appeared in the Queen’s Feminist Review, Antigonish Review, FreeFall, and Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era, among other publications. She is the editor of the award-winning We Who Can Fly: Poems, Essays and Memories in Honour of Adele Wiseman. Her most recent publication, Moving, searches for lost homes and uncovers the importance of such a thing as a home.
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Alyxandra Harvey is the bestselling author of Haunting Violet and Stolen Away, as well as the popular series of vampire novels The Drake Chronicles. She lives in an old Victorian stone house with her husband, dogs, and a few friendly ghosts. Harvey’s latest collection of epic poem short stories, Briar Rose, revisits classic fairy tales and finds strange and unsettling surprises within them.
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Laurence Hutchman is the author of six books of poetry including Blue Riders and Emery. He is the recipient of an honourable mention for the Alfred G. Bailey Award, co-editor of Coastlines: the Poetry of Atlantic Canada, and former President of the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick. His latest poetry collection, Reading the Water, uncovers the allegorical properties of water in meditations on creativity, thoughtfulness, and disruption.
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Maureen Hynes is the author of Harm’s Way and the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award-winning poetry collection Rough Skin. She is poetry editor for Our Times magazine, and co-editor of we make the air: The Poetry of Lina Chartrand. She is a past winner of the Petra Kenney Poetry Award, and her work has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and appears in Best Canadian Poetry 2010. Her most recent publication, Marrow, Willow, explores human morality from a variety of personal and political viewpoints.
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Steve Luxton has published five collections of poetry, is the founding editor of The Moosehead Review, and has worked as editor for Matrix, Quadrant Editions, and DC Books. He edited the anthology Saturday Night at the Forum and co-edited Full Moon: An Anthology of Women Poets. His poetry, reviews, and articles have appeared in Canadian Literature, Fiddlehead, and The Gazette, among many other publications. Luxton founded The Montreal Storytellers, an oral storytelling group. His latest book, In the Vision of Birds: New and Selected Poems, explores the natural landscape in Quebec’s Eastern townships.
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Toronto-based writer Anthony M. Pignataro (Canada/Italy) recently retired from a 32-year career in teaching and continues his work as a Deacon, Spiritual Director, speaker, and musician. Most notably, his poetry appears in the anthologies Italian Canadian Voices and Roman Candles. From Under A Linden Tree is his first collection of poetry, and contains work selected from over 20 years of writing. The poems in this collection explore the ups and downs of life through the motifs of nature and the changing seasons.
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Jenny Sampirisi’s works include the novel is/was. She is co-director of the Toronto New School of Writing, and she teaches English Literature and Composition at Ryerson University. She is the Managing Editor of BookThug, where she also edits the Department of Narrative Studies imprint, which focuses on innovative prose. Her debut poetry collection, Croak, is a Beckettian and vaudevillian exploration of bodies and actions in the realm of the grotesque.
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Winnipeg-based writer Jennifer Still’s poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies across Canada. She is the poetry editor for Contemporary Verse 2 and co-founder of the innovative chapbook publisher, JackPine Press. Her most recent publication, Girlwood, won the John V. Hicks Manuscript Award. The poems in this collection explore the complex transition from girlhood to adulthood, and, more generally, the concepts of lineage and family.
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Toronto-based Nova Scotian Fraser Sutherland is the author of 14 books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including Jonestown: A Poem, Madwomen, and Manual for Immigrants. Formerly a reporter for several major newspapers and magazines, including the Toronto Star and Wall Street Journal, Sutherland was also the founding editor of Northern Journey, a columnist for Quill & Quire, and the managing editor of Books in Canada. His ninth collection of poetry, The Philosophy of As If, explores the role fictions play in our lives, thereby highlighting the tensions between desire and disillusion.
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Born in Budapest, Hungary, Eva Tihanyi currently teaches at Niagara College in Welland, Ontario. Her publications include the short story collection Truth and Other Fictions. She was the literary editor of Niagara Current magazine, the freelance fiction reviewer for the National Post and Toronto Star, and a columnist for Books in Canada. Her most recent collection of poems, In the Key of Red, showcases Tihanyi’s belief in the immense power of poetic language as her poems uncover the complex emotions involved in human relationships of all kinds.
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Daniel Scott Tysdal's first book of poetry, Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method received the ReLit Award for Poetry and the Anne Szumigalski Poetry Award. He teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. His latest collection of poems, The Mourner’s Book of Albums, mixes traditional and avant-garde poetic forms to investigate the various ways in which we mourn, remember, and experience grief.
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Calvin Wharton is the Chair of Creative Writing at Douglas College in New Westminster, B.C. He was editor of Event from 1996–2001, and co-editor of the poetry anthology, East of Main. His works include a chapbook of poems, Visualized Chemistry, the non-fiction piece Rowing, with Silken Laumann, and a collection of short stories, Three Songs by Hank Williams. His most recent poetry collection, The Song Collides, employs the musicality of language to form a highly personal interrogation of the natural world.
