Olive Senior's latest reviewed in The Star

Barbara Carey has written a wonderful review of Olive Senior's latest book Shell. As Olive's editor, I am happy to share the news. Here's a snippet:

In one particularly powerful poem, a shell on a beach becomes an instrument whose music is

"a blast-out, everybody's
history . . . a full
genealogy of this beach, this island people."

In the opening poem, Senior writes from the point of view of a mollusk, teasingly suggesting,

"Take my chambered shell apart. Brace yourselves for whirlwinds
coiled at my heart."

So it is with all the work in this collection: polished and gracefully shaped, but also engagingly passionate.

Read the whole review here, while the link lasts.

Taking a break

I'm taking a break from blogging for a bit. Be back soon.

Anne Stevenson finally gets her due.

In her 75th year, poet Anne Stevenson is propelled from relative obscurity to relative fame, you know, for a poet. Here's the story:

ANNE STEVENSON IS A well-kept secret. She has published 18 volumes of poetry, but you won't find her in The Nation's Favourite Poems. She has lived and written in Britain for more than 40 years but has never won a national poetry prize. She was a contemporary of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes but hasn't come within a mile of their fame.

All that might be about to change, however. If there is such a thing as a poetry jackpot, Stevenson has just hit it: this year she has won three important American literary prizes, together worth $260,000 (£130,000), and in 2008 the Library of America will publish a new edition of her Selected Poems, edited by Andrew Motion. All the more remarkable, this sudden rush of recognition has come in her 75th year (from The Times).

So, you see, there's hope.

My "Elegy for Paul Winchell" is featured on NPR

My poem "Elegy for Paul Winchell" is featured right now on the Northern Poetry Review website.

To learn more about the multi-talented subject of my poem (pictured with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff), please visit his website here.

And while you're at it, check out what else NPR has to offer.

The Runaway Jury

For the last few years, literary blogger Alex Good has been staging The Runaway Jury, a mock jury to put the actual Governor General's jury to the test. This year Alex's jury consisted of Alex, Carmine Starnino, and myself. We put this year's poetry nominees through our own critical paces. To see what we had to say about the short-listed collections by Dennis Lee, Rob Winger, Brian Henderson, Margaret Atwood, and winner Don Domanski, just click here.

CBC has a poet of the month. Who knew?

This month it's Susan Gillis. They interview her. Good work, CBC.

Check it out.

I have a new poem in Taddle Creek Magazine

Hey folks, my poem "Hands" is in the Christmas 2007--10th Anniversary issue of Taddle Creek Magazine. You can read the poem online thanks to the Taddle Creek website, just click here.

The magazine and its editor and publisher Conan Tobias have been steadfast supporters of my work over the years, so of course it is a genuine pleasure to be included in the anniversary issue.

Taddle Creek will, of course, be celebrating its anniversary in style—and you’re invited. Please join Taddle Creek on Wednesday, November 28th, at the Gladstone Hotel ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West, starting at 8 p.m. Ever-so-brief readings will be performed by Gary Barwin, Chris Chambers, Dani Couture, Patrick Rawley, and David Whitton, with music by the Eradicators. There will also be door prizes, and maybe cake. Admission, as always, is free, free, free.

Wilfred Owen profiled in the Telegraph, just in time for Remembrance Day

Jeremy Paxon on Wilfred Owen's life, achievements, and death:

I don't suppose there's a thoughtful student in the land who is unaware of Wilfred Owen's best-known poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est".

Indeed, it tells us something about our pervading cynicism that Horace's words are now taken more readily as sarcasm than at face value.

It is often assumed – as a student, I made the mistake myself – that the poem's author was some sort of bitter, jaundiced pacifist. But the enigma of Wilfred Owen is that he was anything but that. The fascination of his life is his embodiment of contradictions.

It is true that he was not among the first to answer the call to bash the Boche. Indeed, he seems to have been a rather fey and precious young man, first as a vicar's assistant in Berkshire, and then as an English teacher in France.

When he finally decided to join the Army (through the Artists' Rifles, to fit with his own idea of himself as a poet, despite the fact that he was unpublished, and, frankly, not very good, either) he was repulsed by the coarseness of the men among whom he found himself.

But his letters to his mother – our main source of information about his life – show how much he changed. Initial distaste at the vulgarity of the sweaty, noisy men among whom he was obliged to live became a genuine love.

Read the whole story here.