Toronto Poet and Essayist Maureen Scott Harris
Wins Tasmanian Writing Prize

Toronto, April 7, 2009….Pedlar Press is delighted to announce that Maureen Scott Harris is the 2009 winner of the WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. The prize is awarded every second year by WildCare, the largest and fastest growing incorporated environmental action group in Tasmania. Although the contest is open to international entries, 2009 marks the first time in the Prize’s history that it has been won by a non-Australian. Harris won for her essay on the Don River, titled Broken Mouth: Offerings for the Don River, Toronto.

The 2009 WildCare writing contest attracted more entries than ever before, with a record 140 submissions. Along with publication in an upcoming issue of Island Magazine, a Tasmanian journal focused on issues of social, environmental and cultural significance, Harris wins $5,000, roundtrip airfare to Tasmania and a two-week long residency in a Tasmanian National Park. While in residence, Harris will also lead a writers’ workshop. WildCare began the Nature Writing Prize in 2003 in an effort to encourage a better understanding of the special connections between the people and the wild places of Tasmania.

Maureen Scott Harris is a poet and essayist based in Toronto. Her first collection of poems, A Possible Landscape (Brick Books), was published in 1993. Her second collection, Drowning Lessons (Pedlar Press), was published in 2004 and that year won the Ontario Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Recent awards include The LBJ/Avian Life/Literary Arts Sparrow Prize for Prose, (2008), Second Prize in CV2’s Two-Day Poem Contest, (2007), First Prize in Prairie Fire’s Creative Non-Fiction Contest (2006), First Prize in Arc’s Annual Poem of the Year Contest (2002), Second Prize in Arc’s Annual Poem of the Year Contest (2001), and Second Prize in Grain Magazine’s Annual Short Grain Contest, Prose Poems (2000).

Poet laureate helps integrate arts, community March 30, 2009 – Halifax Chronicle Herald – Angela Mombourquette / Don’t get me started?

‘PEOPLE THINK that poets just kind of sit and stare off into space and write about the sunset,” Lorri Neilsen Glenn tells me with a laugh.

“But it’s not like that at all. It’s like any other kind of writing. It’s work, and it means paying attention to the world around you and following up on that.”

She would know. Neilsen Glenn is the author of numerous books, including several collections of poetry, and she is the outgoing poet laureate of Halifax Regional Municipality.

The deadline has just passed in the search for her successor, who will be the municipality’s third poet laureate since the position was created in 2001.

(Sue MacLeod was our first laureate from 2001 to 2005, and Neilsen Glenn has held the position since then.) So, as we await the proclamation of our new poet laureate, I think we should check in with our current resident poet.

I ask Neilsen Glenn why a city like Halifax needs a poet laureate.

“Why does anywhere need a poet laureate?” she responds. “It’s because the arts always need to be integrated into the community as much as possible.

“We know that the health of the arts represents the health of the community. We know that kids, through work and study in the arts, do better in traditional areas, such as math and science. That’s been established. And yet somehow, the arts are typically marginalized.”

One of her goals has been to change that.

Part of the mandate of each poet laureate is to create a “legacy project,” and Neilsen Glenn says that perhaps the proudest achievement of her term has been the creation of a youth group called Wordfishing.

“I am really delighted with this terrific group of young people who are in high school and early university,” she tells me. “We meet every month or so at the Jade W bookshop, and they bring their work. These kids are not only poets, but they are short-story writers and songwriters.”

Last fall, the group recorded their songs and then published a chapbook with a CD.

“It’s been amazing,” she gushes.

“They are just very inspiring.”

Her successor will also serve as a sort of ambassador and advocate for literacy, and, as she puts it, “represent the literary arts in the community.”

Neilsen

Glenn’s busy term included organizing a municipal authors’ night and “book crawl” at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, working with the Dartmouth literacy network, teaching various workshops and spearheading a series of readings at the Halifax public library called Poetry in Many Languages, where new Canadians read poetry in their first languages.

She also travelled across Canada, performing readings with some of the other poets laureate from across the country.

With all those demands, I ask if her writing might have suffered a bit.

She admits that her work had to go on the back burner a bit because of her other responsibilities. But she adds that “I would never complain.”

“The position might take away from writing time, but it also provides other things that you wouldn’t otherwise experience: the chance to meet all sorts of different people, and learn more about what’s going on in the literary community, not only locally, but across the country. So it’s really fortunate to have that kind of opportunity.

“It has been a privilege.”

The municipality’s next poet laureate will be announced in mid-April.

?

2nd Annual Les Prix Rideau Awards Winners Announced! Winners have been announced for Ottawa’s 2nd annual Les Prix Rideau Awards, which celebrate achievement in English and French professional theatre in Ottawa. The awards were presented during a celebration at Arts Court Theatre on Sunday, April 5, 2009.

David O’Meara’s play Disaster was nominated in 2 categories:

Emerging Artist Award – David O’Meara (Playwright)

Outstanding Performance – Male – Paul Rainville (Disaster, New Theatre of Ottawa)

For full listings, go to www.rideauawards.ca

April 9, 2009 – The finalists for the 2009 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards have been selected. Presented by the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Literary Arts Foundation NL, the awards this year honour excellence in non-fiction and poetry.

The finalists for the EJ Pratt Poetry Award, sponsored by Kathy LeGrow and the KA Pratt Group of Companies, are:

INTERVIEW WITH CAROLYN SMART by Tracy Hamon, Manageable Imaginations blog