Guest Author - M. E. Wood

On March 31st, the Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist for 2004 was announced. The Griffin Poetry Prize is the most lucrative prize ($80, 000) for poets. The annual award is for the two best books of poetry published the previous year.

This year there were 423 eligible books from 15 countries. Of the seven finalists three were Canadian. The poets will be invited to read in Toronto at the MacMillan Theatre on June 2nd. There will be two winners, one from the Canadian shortlist and one from the International shortlist. Each winner will receive $40,000. The actual awards will be presented on June 3rd when the winners are announced.

The Griffin Poetry Prize was launched in 2000 by Scott Griffin. He was assisted by Margaret Atwood, Robert Haas, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Robertson and David Young. The purpose is to encourage excellence in poetry (English) anywhere in the world.

The 2004 Canadian Shortlist

Now You Care by Di Brandt (Coach House Books)


Di Brandt – grew up in Reinland, a Mennonite farming village in south central Manitoba and was one of the first women writers to break the public silence of Mennonite women in Canada. She taught English and Creative Writing at the University of Winnipeg (1986-1995) and currently teaches Creative Writing and Canadian Literature at the University of Windsor. She recently spent a year living and writing in Berlin. She is a former poetry editor of Prairie Fire and a founding member of the feminist editorial collective of Contemporary Verse II.

She has received many awards, including the Gerald Lampert Award, the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award and the CAA National Poetry Award. She has been twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and has been nominated for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. Now You Care is her fifth collection of poetry and has also been shortlisted for the 2004 Trillium Book Award.

Other publications:
Questions I asked my mother (1987)
Agnes in the sky (1990)
Mother, not mother: Poems (1992)
Wild Mother Dancing: Maternal Narrative (1993)
Jerusalem Beloved (1995)
Dancing naked: Narrative strategies for... (1995)


Loop by Anne Simpson (McClelland & Stewart)


Anne Simpson – has spent periods of time working or studying in Italy, West Africa and the U. K. Currently she lives with her family in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she has worked for seven years as the Coordinator of the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University. During 2002-2003, she was Writer in Residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.

Her first collection of poetry, Light Falls Through You, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Poetry Award. Her first novel, Canterbury Beach, was shortlisted for the 2002 Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. In 1997, her short story “Dreaming Snow” shared the Journey Prize; and in 1999, she was awarded the Bliss Carman Poetry Award.

Other publications:
Light Falls Through You (2000)
Canterbury Beach (2001), novel

go-go dancing for Elvis by Leslie Greentree (Frontenac House Ltd.)


Leslie Greentree – was born in Grande Prairie, Alberta and earned a B.A. (English) and a B. Ed at the University of Lethbridge. As well as working full-time at Red Deer Public Library, Greentree does freelance writing and acts as associate editor for a Central Alberta cultural tabloid called artichoke.

She recently won the CBC Poetry Face-off for Calgary, and is competing in the National Face-off in April 2004. She has read across Alberta, as well as in Saskatoon, Humboldt and Toronto, and is a featured reader at the Moose Jaw Festival of Words this summer, and the South Country Fair in Fort McLeod, Alberta. She had been a featured reader at various literary festivals, including the popular Word on the Street Festival in Calgary. Greentree is one of several organizers of Crossing Place: Red Deer Writers’ Festival, a day long literary festival featuring writers from Central Alberta and beyond. She serves on two cultural boards in Red Deer.

Other publications:
guys named Bill (2002)

Congratulations to our Canadian Poets!

Be sure to check out author links, upper right corner.