April 10, 2007
Torontoist Poetry Contest Winner: Betts is Best
How is National Poetry Month treating you? On the second week of celebration, Torontoist is beginning to buckle a little under the strain of too much fun, but it warms our hearts to witness the large number of bookish events offered this April. We are happy to announce the winners of our poetry contest as part of the nationwide festivities.
Back in January, Torontoist launched a Toronto poetry contest to encourage the writing of new poems about our fair city. Congratulations to poets Maureen Hynes, Prathna Lor, Peter O'Donovan, Jenny Sampirisi, and Matthew Tierney, whose poems receive honourable mentions. Stay tuned over the next two weeks to read their work, and to view the locations of the contest entries presented in lovingly rendered cartography.
Our thanks to all contestants, to judges Carly Beath, Stephen Cain, and Jay MillAr, and to sponsors Coach House Books, ECW Press, Junction Books, iloveyougalleries, and The Mercury Press. Today, we present the winning poem, “Eatons Effluviad,” by Gregory Betts.
Gregory Betts was born in Vancouver to Maritime parents, and, "as part of the national compromise," spent most of his life in Toronto. Though not a natural "Upper Canadian," Gregory's work in poetry, fiction, and criticism has consistently explored the literary milieu of his adoptive city. He is the author of If Language (2005) and the collaborative Haikube (2006)—the sculptural counterpart of which, by Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel, is currently on display at the Olga Korper Gallery. He teaches Canadian and Avant-Garde Literature at Brock University in St. Catharines.
His winning poem, "Eaton’s Effluviad," was written across from the shopping centre at Yonge and Dundas. Oddly enough, this intersection was the poetic location most frequently cited by our contest entrants; we were surprised to know that people from Toronto actually go there!
Gregory wins: Torontology by Stephen Cain (ECW Press), The Shooter’s Bible by Karen Solie (Junction Books), The State of The Arts: Living With Culture in Toronto (Coach House Books), Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press), a framed I Love You Toronto photographic print by Sharon Harris, and eternal bragging rights.
Read Gregory Betts’s "Eaton’s Effluviad" after the break.
Photo of Gregory Betts (with tip of the CN Tower) by Lisa Betts.
"EATON'S EFFLUVIAD" by Gregory Betts
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Yay, Gregory! Fantastic work.
(Excuse the gush-- we went to grad school together.)
Woo! Go, Jenny Sampirisi!
I think this poem is about the ugliness of the square, but it's very abstract and the political references throw me off. Anybody have any ideas about this poem?
greg, what a powerful, dark and accurate poem! the irony of 'welcome' in the speakers voice is chilling in this most unwelcoming cement hole. the historical references don't throw me off at all. they enrich the poem, well actually they are the poem, in their recollection of the many who've had their hopes dashed in the enduring banality of our empty cultural landscape. yonge and dundas is a ridiculous monument to publc squares in many homelands over a huge swath of time where momentous and tragic revoltuionary hopes were both realized and collapsed.
Wow, that's really rather intense. I felt the smoldering, but the last stanza makes a lot more sense now. The line that "facing the broad picture is not something that happens to us" is just awesome in its context. I guess it would help if I knew more of the references, but the intensity is real. Thanks Lyn.
yeah, that was a one liner close reading, JS.i thought i was rather cool. after all, i could have jumped on "the equator's blood shadow". greg, i still think it's a great poem.
it's a great poem. thanks.
okay, so i'm going to have to disagree with the general concensus - this poem strikes me as ten pounds of intellectual sh*t in a five pound bag. some of the lines and images are okay, but seriously, has anybody thought it was cool to slip "k.k.k." into a poem (oh, kanada is so FASCIST and bourgeois [whatever that means]) since grade 8? i'd say the selection of this piece says more about us as canadians - tell us we should be hating ourselves in the most pretentious, polysylabic way possible and we'll LOVE you for it - than it does about good poetry.
that's right. cause poetry HAS to be smarter than britney but dumber than barbara streisand. otherwise it's elitist.
all good art aims for the middle.
oh, and about kredit kard kanada. have you ever been to dundas square? that place deserves everything that gets thrown at it. it says more about canadians that they (and that means you) are so willing to accept and live with mediocrity.
aim for the middle, indeed.
the square used to suck chunks, but it has gotten better. like the city as a whole. i actually don't really like any of the specific lines in this poem, but i ^ love ^ the overall. read it out loud. it becomes like a chant, and the words fall away to the emotion.
from the capital,
--*^- Amy -^*--