Congrats to Karen Solie, fast becoming a fixture on the Canadian poetry scene, for her Griffin win. Also, hats off to an Irish poet, who also won. Maybe next time, the paper this links to can feature the International winner's photo instead - or is this the new Olympic Spirit of Grab That Podium or whatever that already-forgotten slogan was from those Winter Olympics? Seriously, 130,000 Canadian dollars is a lot to fork out on two poets, and hopefully over time this prize will lead to people actually reading Canadian poetry somewhere beyond our borders, with anything approaching the love and enthusiasm they show for Scottish and Irish and Australian poets. Canada is becoming a cool place, eh? Now David Cameron wants to borrow our vicious cost-cutting methods from the Chretien years. Will he start speaking in that funny way too?
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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