From our friends at Goose Lane Editions
Goose Lane Editions is deeply honoured to announce that author Craig Poile has been nominated for a 2010 Ottawa Book Award for English Fiction for his acclaimed collection True Concessions! The Ottawa Book Award was established in 1986 to celebrate the cream of Ottawa’s literary crop. Past winners of the award include such noted Canadian luminaries as Alan Cumyn, Elizabeth Hay and Francis Itani.
Craig Poile grew up in New Brunswick and now lives in Ottawa, where he runs a book store, Collected Works, with his partner Christopher. His debut collection, First Crack, was shortlisted for the 1999 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. He has published in journals such as The Fiddlehead, The Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Notes and Queries, Arc and Queen’s Quarterly. He has also been active in Ottawa theatre as both a playwright and producer.
Written over a ten-year span, the poems of True Concessions are the chronicle of a mind in the thrall of past traditions while searching for insight and understanding in the contemporary world. From the erotic charms of the fairground “carney” to a manic meditation on recycling to an essay on the role of the telephone in one life (in two parts), they have in common the use of fleeting, real-life incidents or observations as departure points for finding something durable, expressed, and made memorable with language.
Poile looks for topics rich with images and incident: a fish-shaped balloon, a dilapidated truck subdued by a hockey fan's mania, the inventions of a window dresser, and the complexities of a domestic romance stretching into its second decade. Incidents and images form realizations that still, in the end, you're living the last half of your life, and the great expectations of youth must be abandoned.
Other nominees in the category of English Fiction include Kate Jaimet (Dunces Anonymous), Sheila James (In the Wake of Loss), and Susan McMaster (Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer's, My Mother and Me).
The winners will be announced October 29, 2010.
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For more information about True Concessions please visit the Goose Lane Website.
Buy this book at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
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