On Wednesday, February 20, Descant will be celebrating the memory of Winston Collins, writer and enthusiastic teacher of literature at the universities of Cincinnati, Princeton and Toronto, by announcing the winner of the 2013 Winston Collins/Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem.
The finalists are (in no particular order):
Richard Scarsbrook: “Fortune”
Laura Lamont: “Night Vision”
Elizabeth Greene: “Summer’s Children and Their Mother”
Michael Kleiza: “A Remembering Song”
Terry Ann Carter: “Letters of War”
Hector Williamson: “Aesthetics Come Slowly”
John Lee: “Bringing the Farmhouse Down”
Margot Maddison-MacFadyen: “The Emergent Seed”
Joan Crate: “Leda”
How neat to see upstanding people John Lee and Terry Ann Carter among them, and Joan Crate whose Brick Book of book of poems for Pauline Johnson I’m reading presently.
I, for one, have asked the editor at Descant to strike me off the list of finalists that will be published in the Summer issue. I find the list of little use to readers of the issue if they cannot read the poems that the finalists have written.
Hi Michael,
I suppose the use I find with lists such as these is that they raise consciousness about a name. Every time you see a name you are more likely to remember it the next time you see it. It acts as a wee free publicity in a vastly oversupplied market of poetry.
It’s always interesting to compare names published somewhere with those I’ve met and read before.
In this case I’m familiar with 3 names, having read Joan Crate and curious about what she does next, or signs of literary life.
And I’ve had the luck of time spent with Terry Ann Carter and John Lee.
Pearl:
I didn’t know you had responded so long ago. Anyway you’ll be interested to know (perhaps not) that the poem “A Remembering Song” is included in a collection of my poetry, under the title “A poet on the moon” which will be out later this year.