Verse Case Scenario

Quiet contemplation: Poet Anne Compton. Courtesy Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited.

Let’s face it: when it comes to literary awards, fiction is the glamorous main event, the klieg-lit heavyweight division. But twice a year, poetry steps into the ring for a big-money prizefight of its own. In the spring, there’s the glitzy Griffin Poetry Prize, where $50,000 goes to both a Canadian book and an international title. And then there’s the autumn classic, the Governor General’s Award, whose finalists were just announced. It’s worth $15,000 to the winner.

Traditionally, the GG poetry shortlist offers a mix of old hands and new faces, a modest range of styles and at least one what-were-they-thinking? title. Extravagantly experimental work seldom gets a mention, but inventively tweaking the standard lyrical narrative often helps a book stand out from the crowd. (And it is a crowd: the 2005 jury read 144 collections.)

This year’s list follows suit, though there’s neither an oddball choice nor a brand-new “It” poet to be found. Are there deserving poets who got left off? Definitely, but that just proves there’s so much interesting work this year that the jury is faced with an embarrassment of riches — and a tough job narrowing down its choices. In fact, it’s a strong, representative list, ranging in style from the traditional lyric (even rhyming verse) to postmodern playfulness.

Here’s a look at the five contenders and some thoughts on their chances of winning.

Courtesy Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited.

The relative newcomer is Anne Compton, who teaches at the University of New Brunswick at Saint John. Processional (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) is only her second collection, but her first, Opening the Island, won the Atlantic Poetry Prize, so she can hardly be considered a neophyte.

The title of the book refers to the march of time and the seasons, which get major thematic play. Compton excels at the traditional tools of the poetic trade, such as rhyme and metre, but she can go free form, too. As the title of one section — “And Now to Play” — hints, she enjoys taking imaginative liberties, adopting the voice of a Dickensian headmaster in one poem and an independent-minded 18th-century woman sitting for a portrait in another.

Compton’s style is like menthol: a bit cool, but clean and refreshing. In “Woman of a Certain Age, Spring,” her lines are so crisp they practically snap: “Tense for months, the river plans a riot. We’re imbrued. / Inflamed. Want it over the top. Want disorder, drama, / excess. Insurgent muck and slosh.”

Processional is an elegant, accomplished book — but it isn’t likely to win. The Governor General’s Award has tended to go to a writer in mid or late career.

Someone who fits that category is W.H. New. A professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, he already has one GG (honouring his scholarly work in Canadian studies) to his credit.

Courtesy Oolichan Books.

In a poem-prologue, New promises that Underwood Log (Oolichan Books), his sixth collection, will lead into “storybook and wild mind, overseas and / inland.” He bounces off quotations from other writers, cites stories in newspapers and on the internet and consults the historical record and Funk & Wagnalls. His vignettes are not random, but they sometimes progress in surprising ways. One passage begins with a description of the role trees play in scary tales (“the storybooks — Oz, Hansel & Gretel — / gnarl treetrunks into monsters, limbs into / traps”), but concludes by suggesting that real danger lurks elsewhere.

As the oldest of the finalists, New could have a sentimental edge. But GG juries don’t tend to give lifetime achievement awards. The inclusion of Underwood Log is a sign of respect, but it probably won’t win.

Barry Dempster’s ninth collection, The Burning Alphabet (Brick Books), gives off heat, melding intemperate emotion — especially rage and despair — with lyrical control. Who would have thought subjects like chronic illness, suicide and a father’s death could be, if not outright fun, at least engaging? Credit the Toronto-area writer’s compelling images and lively cadences, not to mention a wry jauntiness that, paradoxically, makes some of the bleakest poems also the funniest. Every one bursts with arresting turns of phrase: a dead elm tree is “the colour / of a wet ghost”; illness is imagined as a planet, “somewhere airless / where miracles go to grieve.”

The Burning Alphabet is the right mix of blistering honesty and adroit artfulness to impress a jury, but it’s facing stiff competition.

As a past winner (for Furious, in 1988) and a finalist on three other occasions, Montreal poet Erin Mouré is the frontrunner. She’s one of our most innovative writers, with more than a dozen books to her credit, and shows no signs of dulling down. In Little Theatres (Teatriños), published by Anansi, her restlessness with the limits of language takes her beyond the borders of English. Some poems are in Galician (the language of a region in northwestern Spain) and appear in tandem with their English translations. Elsewhere, phrases in Galician, Portuguese and Spanish are scattered throughout a sequence of reflections on how cultural values are embedded in languages. It sounds esoteric, but it’s not. At the heart of these poems is the urgent question of how different cultures can speak to each other.

Erin Mouré. Courtesy House of Anansi Press.

Mouré relies on an elemental simplicity of diction that yields rich associations. One sequence of poems pays homage to the ingredients of borscht, but with metaphoric brilliance: “In the onion, there’s / something of fire. That fire known as / Fog. The onion is the way / Fog has of entering the earth,” she writes in one poem. It will be no surprise if Little Theatres (Teatriños) wins. No disappointment, either. It’s a terrific book, and if I were on the jury I’d happily cast my vote for it.

Or maybe not, because there’s also the charmingly subversive Over the Roofs of the World (Insomniac Press), the third collection from Olive Senior, a Jamaican-born poet and fiction writer who now lives in Toronto. In part, Over the Roofs of the World is a witty field guide to a range of avian species, with one common denominator. As in Aesop’s Fables, their characteristics and behaviour — in the wild and in the barnyard, in the tropics and the temperate zone, in literature and in legend — tend to reflect human foibles. Thus we get sexual politics and power dynamics with colourful plumage. We also get vivid phrasing, such as her description of the owl as “rider of nightmares / like half-baked dreams sprinkled / with grave dust.”

Over the Roofs of the World has scope in style — from its roots in Jamaican oral culture to lofty lyrical meditations — as well as tone — from comic portraits to melancholy reflections on belonging. It could well rise to the top of the list.

The Governor General’s Literary Awards will be announced in Montreal on Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Barbara Carey is a Toronto writer.