The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology 2022
Eli MacLaren

Entries juried by Cameron Awkward-Rich, Martin Breul, Heather Christle, Nabina Das, Liz Howard, Joanne Limburg, Conor O’Callaghan, Tanure Ojaide, Michael Prior, Medrie Purdham, Mark Tredinnick, and Rhian Williams

Finalists judged by Lorna Goodison

Founded in 2010, the Montreal International Poetry Prize has established itself as a major event in contemporary poetry, both in Canada and around the world. The 2022 anthology continues the work of its predecessors, building the community of contemporary poetry on the twin principles of aesthetics and accessibility. Under this banner – poetry is for everyone – these poems speak of historic desolation and everyday bravery. Their images grip and hold. Here common experience crystallizes into stanzaic form, lending dignity to life in a ravaged world; here poetry melts into a rising, increasingly acidic ocean of prose that weeps for a prior earth.

From thousands of entries, these sixty poems were chosen for the virtue of their speaking to the reader, artfully and clearly. Lorna Goodison, winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, then judged the finalists, selecting the one poem – included here – to take the $20,000 prize. From Canada, Australia, the Caribbean, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Romania, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere, these lyrics voice a reality that you will recognize as strangely yours.

Whiteout
George Elliott Clarke

In Whiteout: How Canada Cancels Blackness, his new and essential collection of essays, George Elliott Clarke exposes the various ways in which the Canadian imagination demonizes, excludes, and oppresses Blackness. Clarke’s range is extraordinary: he canvasses African-Canadian writers who have tracked Black invisibility, highlights the racist bias of true crime writing, reveals the whitewashing of African-Canadian perspectives in universities, and excoriates the political failure to reckon with the tragedy of Africville, the once-thriving, “Africadian” community whose last home was razed in 1970.

For Clarke, Canada’s relentless celebration of itself as a site of “multicultural humanitarianism” has blinded White leaders and citizens to the country’s many crimes, at home and abroad, thus blacking out the historical record. These essays yield an alternate history of Canada, a corrective revision that Clarke describes as “inking words on snow, evanescent and ephemeral.”

The Civilizing Discourse
Evan Jones

“If I can impart one final message, beyond the usual declarative to read poetry and buy poetry books,” writes Evan Jones in his introduction to The Civilizing Discourse, “it is to listen to poets. The real ones offer wisdom and a perspective at odds with prevalent visions.”

In a series of passionate, enlightening, frank, engaging, and sometimes astonishing conversations, thirteen poets—many acknowledged masters—open up about their writing processes, their childhoods and marriages, their regrets, as well as their hopes for and frustration with poetry. From Norm Sibum describing his affinity with a waitresses and cabbies to Nyla Matuk’s wrenching investigations into the Palestinian side of her family; from Don Coles’s obsession with alternative universes to Robyn Sarah’s praise for discarded things; from Elise Partridge describing her shift in priorities after a cancer diagnosis to Steven Heighton’s interest in remaining childlike, The Civilizing Discourse is not only a highly readable record of the literary scene today, but, in its celebration of language, will appeal to poetry readers and poets alike.



Poets included: Daryl Hine, Norm Sibum, Marius Kociejowski, Don Coles, Elise Partridge, Steven Heighton, Robyn Sarah, A.F. Moritz, Robert Bringhurst, Anne Compton, Nyla Matuk, Iman Mersal
The Human Scale
Michael Lista

Whether investigating a gruesome triple-murder, a fairy tale marriage gone horribly wrong, or a brilliant con artist, Michael Lista has proven himself one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation. In his belief that crime reporting thrives the closer it moves to the human scale—where every uncovered secret reveals the truth of our obligations to each other—Lista builds his compulsively readable narratives from details (fake flowers, a little girl's necklace) others might pass over, details that provide a doorway into the extreme situations he is drawn to. The Human Scale not only includes Lista's most celebrated magazine stories to date, but comes with postscripts that describe his process in writing each piece, and the fallout from publication. Here is long-form journalism in its most hallowed form: brilliant and bingeable.
While Supplies Last
Anita Lahey

Anita Lahey writes the kind of rigorously observed, emotionally charged poetry few can match. In While Supplies Last, her first collection in eleven years, Lahey throws herself on the mercy of a changing climate, takes refuge in art and revels in everyday wonders. In the final section, about a forest fire that devastated the Cape Breton village of Main-à-dieu in 1976, she becomes a custodian of local histories. No matter the subject, whether traffic reports during the pandemic, a fossilized baby mammoth, or Toronto’s iconic Don River, Lahey extends the sense of what language can do and say. This is tour de force writing: mischievous, unpredictable, urgent, never boring. In While Supplies Last, Lahey comes fully into her own.

Press

On States of Emergency:
"Yoyo Comay's States of Emergency

On The Four-Doored House:
“The striking, densely packed, remarkably translated poems of The Four-Doored House

On Cathedral/Grove:
Praise for Susan Glickman: “These lyric poems have an unassuming grace and clarity.”—Barbara Carey, Toronto Star

On Whiteout:
Whiteout

News

DECEMBER NEWSLETTER (click for link)
'Tis the season to give the gift of books and we have just the thing for every book lover. From pulp fiction to pop culture, true love to true crime. As we approach the end of our 50th year, thank you to everyone who supported our mission of publishing quality Canadian writing. We can’t wait to share our new 2024 titles!

FÉLICITATIONS HOTLINE!
The French translation of Dimitri Nasrallah's Hotline (translated by Daniel Grenier, published by La Peuplade) has made the longlist for the Prix des libraires du Québec! Félicitations Daniel et Dimitri!

NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER (click for link)
Join us on Sat. Nov. 25 at Paragraphe to launch our fall Signal Editions poetry titles Cathedral/Grove, Quicker Than The Eye, and States of Emergency. Looking for a pulp fiction holiday gift? Buy the latest six Ricochet Noir books in a special bundle for only $75! And our books will be at the Salon du livre de Montréal courtesy Saga Bookstore from Nov. 22-26.

OCTOBER NEWSLETTER (click for link)
Join us for the launches of our fall lineup! The Word hosts Spirits in the Dark author H. Nigel Thomas on November 1 in Montreal; on November 8, in Toronto, Lisa Whittington-Hill will be at Supermarket with Girls, Interrupted; then on November 25 at 2 pm Paragraphe welcomes our fall poets and their books Cathedral/Grove, Quicker Than The Eye, and States of Emergency. And on November 3 and 4, we will be at the Concordia McConnell Building Atrium for the Read Quebec Book Fair!SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER (click for link)
We're launching our Fall 2023 Signal Editions poetry on Wednesday, October 4 at Flying Books in Toronto! Join host Carmine Starnino for readings by Susan Glickman from her new release Cathedral/Grove, Joe Fiorito reading from his new collection Quicker Than the Eye and Yoyo Comay reading from his debut book States of Emergency. You can also join best-selling mystery author Sheila Kindellan-Sheehan for the launch of My Brother's Keeper, her latest novel featuring Lieutenant Detective Toni Damiano. The event will be at Indigo Pointe Claire, 6321 autoroute Transcanadienne, on Saturday October 14 from 12 PM–3 PM. Girls, Interrupted: How Pop Culture is Failing Women by Lisa Whittington-Hill will be released next month and launched on November 8th at Supermarket Bar in Toronto. Plus, Michael Lista at Edmonton's LitFest this October and Anita Lahey in Whistler and Waterloo next month talking about her new book While Supplies Last.
Discover

Click here to see Kaie Kellough read from his QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Award winning book Dominoes at the Crossroads

Click here to listen to Rosalind Pepall's interview on CBC's All in a Weekend about Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator.

In Periodicities’ fifth series of videos, Sadiqa de Meijer reads a few poems from her new book, The Outer Wards. Click here

Read “The Silence of A.M. Klein,” an incisive essay by our editor Carmine Starnino in the April issue of The New Criterion.



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The Canada Council
Véhicule Press acknowledges the generous support of its publishing program from the Book Publishing Industry Development Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, The Canada Council for the Arts, and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC).