Gillian Wallace won the Diana Brebner Award for 2009 with Crow, of the family Corvidae.
The contest is open to any poet living in the National Capital Region who has not yet been published in book form.
A reading was held at Collected Works on Feb 16th. It was a full little room with a spillover of a dozen into the next room.
People read from the latest issue of Arc as well as poems by Diana Brebner from Ishtar, and told memories of her. As it turned out, the host this year, Lesley Buxton, was a friend of Diana’s. She noted Brebner’s strong and dark humour which lasted even into her last days with cancer.
Jacqueline Kawaja was the runner up for the Diana Brebner Award. Funnily enough she also had a personal connection to the person behind the award. She was a friend of Diana’s daughter. As a teen tremblingly asked for feedback on her poems. Diana was the first to treat her like a real poet and read her poems with respect. Diana advised she take out all of the emotion in the poem and set it aside for 6 months. When coming back to it, try to recreate the original feeling.
Jennifer Dales, Claudia Coutu-Radmore read.
Ken Victor and Barbara Myers also read.
The deadline schedule shifted for the next Diana Brebner Award so all submissions to the 2010 competition must be postmarked no later than March 1, 2010.