The recipient of the first annual John Lent Poetry Prose Award will read in Vernon on Monday.
Winnipeg-based poet Ariel Gordon was the first recipient of the award with her manuscript of poems, How to Make a Collage.
“The winning selection fearlessly wrestles the complexities of human relationships using emotionally dynamic lines and metaphors,” wrote the judges, writers and Okanagan College English professors Laisha Rosnau, Jake Kennedy and Kevin McPherson.
The award is named after retired Okanagan College Regional Dean and English professor John Lent, who co-founded Kalamalka Press. And it was Lent’s name, in part, that drew Gordon to enter the contest.
“Three things were highly intriguing to me about this contest,” Gordon wrote on her blog Jane Day Reader when she heard the good news. “John Lent not only had a very interesting career, but is also very generous to new writers, including me from the few times we’ve met.
“But first and foremost, it’s an honour to be published with the press John founded, and, specifically, under the aegis of a prize named after him,” said Gordon, who works as promotional/editorial assistant at the University of Manitoba Press.
The chapbook – her fourth – is in the final stages of being letter-pressed by Jason Dewinetz, another English professor with Okanagan College.
“He’s brilliant,” she said. “I followed his Greenboathouse Books for years. He has such a fine eye for design so I’m greatly looking forward to what he and his students do with this text.”
Gordon will be joined by Prince George poet Gillian Wigmore, whose first book of poetry, soft geography, won the 2008 ReLit Award and whose second, Dirt of Ages, was sold out after her dynamic reading at 2012’s Vancouver International Writers’ Festival.
“It’s unusual for a book of poetry to sell out at such a prestigious event,” says Vertigo Voices organizer Laisha Rosnau. “If you come see Gillian read, you’ll know why it was!
“I’m excited to have two extraordinary, fiery new voices in Canadian poetry reading in Vernon. And, with the presentation of this award, to be able to celebrate how much John Lent has influenced Canadian writing and writers, not only here in the Okanagan but across Canada.”
Gordon, Wigmore, and the presentation of the inaugural John Lent Poetry-Prose Award is Monday at the Vertigo Voices Reading Series at Gallery Vertigo, 3001-31st. St., upstairs. Doors open at 7 p.m. and readings begin at 7:30 p.m. All are welcome, by donation. For more information, call 250-503-2297.
