Thursday, October 18, 2007

G.G. Poetry Grumblings, courtesy of Zachariah

Over at Career Limiting Moves, Zach has a few things to say about the G.G. shortlist for poetry. It can be found here:

www.zachariahwells.blogspot.com/2007/10/gg-poetry-shortlist-grumblings.html

I've been battling pneumonia and lord knows what else the past few weeks, and don't have much energy to enter any fray at the moment. But needless to say, I've been thinking about the G.G.'s, the Gillers, Urquhart's Penguin Anthology of the Canadian Short Story (which is really a bloody mess, leaving out as many of the important short fiction writers in Canada as it includes. Nor can the excuse be one of space limitations and differences of taste. Ondaatje as a writer of short fiction??? Include him by all means in almost any other anthology, but short fiction? Adrienne Clarkson??? Sure, she was our Governor General, but a short story writer??? Charles Ritchie??? A wonderful diplomat, an exemplary diarist -- I love him myself -- but a short story writer??? When writers as wonderful and talented and central as Clark Blaise, Terry Griggs, Norman Levine, Keith Fraser, Mary Borsky, Stephen Heighton, Sharon English, John Metcalf, Russell Smith, Diane Schoemperlen, Mike Barnes and so many others are not included? I mean, there's 60 stories for Christ's sake, 600 pages. And this Anthology -- by virtue of it being a Penguin -- will immediately become the standard reference on the subject for years. It's too, too shame making, and it leaves me felling tired. {Though perhaps my general sense of exhaustion is tied more to all of the shit wreaking havoc with my lungs. Let's hope so.})

More, very likely, on all of this later. For now, read Zach. He puts forward a couple of our own titles as deserving of a G.G. nod: Ormsby's Time's Covenant, and Hickey's Midnight Plow. (In the interest of full disclosure, Zach's one of ours here at Biblioasis, so discount these suggestions if you wish, but read him anyway: there's a lot to chew on in his post.

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