The Literary Arts Foundation of NL and the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador announce “Maggs, Wangersky take top book prizes” (St. John’s, May 6, 2009) Randall Maggs and Russell Wangersky came away the winners at the 2009 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards today. The announcement was made at a ceremony this afternoon at Government House in St. John’s.

Maggs won the EJ Pratt Poetry Prize for his Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems (Brick Books, 2008), a collection of conversational poems that follow the tragic trajectory of the life and work of one of hockey’s best goalies, Terry Sawchuk.

This award, sponsored by Kathy LeGrow of KA Pratt Group of Companies, includes a first prize of $1,500. The other two finalists for the EJ Pratt Prize, who each received $500, were George Murray for The Rush to Here (Nightwood Editions, 2007), and Agnes Walsh for Going Around with Bachelors (Brick Books, 2007).

Wangersky won the Rogers Non-fiction Prize for Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself (Thomas Allen, 2008), an account of the author’s years as a volunteer firefighter.

This award, sponsored by Rogers Cable, includes a first prize of $1,500. The other two finalists for the Rogers Cable Non-fiction Prize, who each received $500, were Ray Guy for Ray Guy: The Smallwood Years (Boulder Publications, 2008), and Marie Wadden for Where the Pavement Ends: Canada’s Aboriginal Recovery Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation (Douglas & McIntyre, 2008).

The book awards are co-presented by the Literary Arts Foundation of NL and the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador, under the patronage of The Honourable John C. Crosbie, PC, OC, ONL, QC, Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador.

About Maggs’ Night Work, the jury said, “These poems are as graceful and as tough as the game he loves. Night Work lays bare the heart of one of hockey’s most complex heroes, and in the process it offers rare insight into the sport’s place in our lives and culture. Funny, bloody, heart-in-your-throat, beautiful work.”

About Wangersky’s Burning Down the House, the non-fiction judges remarked: “A deeply etched and expressive memoir encapsulated within his individual and engrossing account of the work of a volunteer firefighter and the emotional gouging it bore in his life. Wangersky’s writing is supple, direct, never self-pitying and full of mettle. The book is descriptive, vivid, immediate, and not easily forgotten.”

This marks the 13th year for the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards, which honour excellence in non-fiction and poetry in odd-numbered years, and in fiction and children’s/young adult literature in even years.

An independent panel of three judges for each category chose the finalists and the winner. The 2009 poetry judges were Michael Crummey, Aislinn Hunter, and Andreae Prozesky. The 2009 non-fiction judges were Stan Dragland, Kevin Major, and Joan Sullivan.

rob mclennan reports on his blog, April 30, 2009 - Ottawa poet David O’Meara might have had his book appear last August, but considering he was travelling Europe for six months starting August 20, this was the first Ottawa launch of his third poetry collection Noble Gas, Penny Black (Brick, 2008). How does one feel connected to a new poetry collection after such an absence? I’ve been hearing O’Meara read around Ottawa for years, back to a reading he did at the Manx Pub with his pal Ken Babstock circa 1994, and I think this might have been the best reading I’ve heard him give, hosted by poet Rob Winger, who talked about O’Meara’s writing as having “a firm grounding in the contemporary.” His reading had a kind of clarity and precision that the other two writers didn’t quite have; wise, to make him third. And the best poem had to be his opener, a new piece exploring voice like a speech, from the “poet laureate of the moon.” After the reading, O’Meara talked about how the editorial process involved him removing much of the rhyme-schemes of a number of the poems, simplifying them; is there a correlation here? And in the question and answer session, where he referred to poetry as “an outlet to explore the reaction to things.” After his six months away, I am intrigued to see what kind of writing he has returned with, just what kinds of pieces might slowly emerge.

Powerboat

It was Sunday. September. Our crew
was pushing it hard for second place.
Our ears roared as the stem-post filleted

the Venice lagoon.
Then another boat kicked into the turn
and we hit their high wash. Our sponson

just pecked the wake, but hooked,
dragged, snapped and we barrel-rolled
back over front, then tacked-

a split-second aloft-
straight down, like hitting brick
at 80 mph. My mind left;

there was a high-pitched whine
like a dog’s whistle, that piped on and on.
I flat-lined. Giuseppe, the medic,

got to me, wiped the blood clear,
and blew into the place where my teeth used to be.I’d been injured before, bruised black

as an old banana, and twice broke my nose.
This was different. There’s no fear,
you just know you’re gone.

Someone was screaming, She’s dead, leave her,
and there were thumps on my chest
like a fist on a tomb.

The sky fluttered, wobbled. I started to breathe.
I was nowhere; calm, happy. My team
hovered above while I flowed underneath.

And that weird whistle, the dazzling brightness.
I drifted like TV static, prickly-warm, like Epsom salts
dissolving and sifting through Giuseppe’s hand.

There’s one moment I remember
in all that light and clatter: I’d been lifted
into a helicopter when something cold

went from my neck to my stomach.
It was paramedics bent over
my shattered body (for all I knew kneeling to pray),

and cutting through my race overalls with a cold
pair of scissors. I remember thinking,
But it’s a La Perla bra. It’s expensive,. Then they lost me again.

they’re going to cut it off