ALONE ON A WINDY RIDGE: Hats off to the Saskatchewan Book Awards

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Hats off to the Saskatchewan Book Awards

...for the great 20th anniversary events in Regina yesterday. Hats off to all the volunteers, staff, partners, funders and sponsors over the years. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees. Yay to everyone who attended. More than 400 tickets sold for the awards ceremony, or so I heard. It was great to see so many writer friends at the ceremony and at the festival of readings earlier in the day. The food was great, too, the desserts and coffee delivered at the perfect moment, happy chatter all around.

Then the program. Sheila Coles, CBC Radio host, has emceed all 20 years of the book awards and there's a reason. Robert Currie, former poet laureate, brought lovely greetings. Sharon Butala, the guest speaker, was amazing. I'm happy I was there.

And today was wonderful. We drove home and enjoyed the migration. Birds everywhere.
___________

I added the judges' citations for Flight Calls and Grid to the sidebar.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Lovely to read those judges' comments. Well done, Brenda.; 29/4/13 3:31 PM
Brenda Schmidt said...: Thanks, Leona! Lovely it is. Both gratifying and fortifying.; 29/4/13 3:45 PM

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"This is a skilled poet having good fun, and inviting us all to join the party." - Shelley A. Leedahl, SaskBooks Reviews. Read more.

"Employing a variety of forms and the culvert stories — who knew? — of numerous people, she digs beneath the obvious roads to find out what keeps the water — the subconscious, the unconscious — flowing smoothly, discovering a variety of things about herself, notably the everyday masks we wear and the aging process we won’t always admit to." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"For Schmidt is indeed a poet. Readers can expect to encounter many visual and acoustic delights along the way, from internal rhymes to arresting images." - Trevor Cook, The Antigonish Review #196.

"In Grid..., Creighton's Brenda Schmidt turns a colder eye to the landscape than most other Canadian poets." - Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press. Read more.

"You can just feel the stones rattling off your undercarriage on this Grid." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"Like the Prairies, this is not a collection that gives itself away: the true beauty of this book lies in subtleties that may not be obvious at first glance." - Emily McGiffin, The Malahat Review. Read more.

"In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective. It is as though the familiar ground is an eye glancing back and the reflection only a nodal-point, open to opportunity and play." - Justin Dittrick, SPG Book Reviews. Read more.

"There is grit in these poems, so much that it seems unfair to think of them as nature poems; like the best nature writing, they undo our expectations of nature rather than uphold them." - Tanis MacDonald, Arc Poetry Magazine. Read more.

"In her fourth collection Grid, Schmidt’s wry humour transcends what we have watched heap up in Canada for more than a century—nature poems—balancing in canola fields between the beautiful lure of nature and our curious urge to separate ourselves from disappearing allotments of our own solace. We have wandered “off the grid” but fortunately Schmidt is an entertaining and insightful guide who can still find Li Po in a Dark-eyed Junco, if she has to." - Garry Thomas Morse, Jacket 2. Read more.

"These supple, witty, and incisive poems delineate our relationship to grids and systems both visible and invisible, natural and political." - Judges' citation, Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry nomination. Jurors: Shawna Lemay, Barbara Nickel, Sharon Thesen.