Poet Laureate
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The Poet Laureate is an honour bestowed to a St. John's poet as a way of acknowledging poets, poetry and their valuable contribution to civic life. Through the Poet Laureate we recognize poetry as a fundamental and necessary component of civic society. The Poet Laureate serves as an ambassador for poetry. They integrate poetry into a range of official and unofficial civic events.
Our Current Poet Laureate:
Mary Dalton
Mary Dalton is Professor of English at Memorial University where she teaches academic and creative-writing courses. Her poems, reviews, essays and interviews have been published in journals and anthologies in Canada, England, Ireland, America and Belgium. She has read her poems at universities and festivals in Canada, the U.S.A. and Ireland. She has given many workshops for writers in St. John's and elsewhere. She is a former editor and co-publisher of the NL literary journal TickleAce and of the Journal of Newfoundland and Labrador Studies. In 2009 she founded the SPARKS Literary Festival at Memorial University.
Dalton has published five volumes of poetry. A collection of her prose writings, Edge: Essays, Reviews, Interviews, was published by Palimpsest Press in 2015. Her third letterpress chapbook, Waste Ground, was released in 2017 by Running the Goat Press. Dalton's latest publication, The Vernacular Strain in Newfoundland Poetry, was released spring 2022 by Breakwater Books as part of their Pratt Lecture series. She is near completing a new volume of poems, with the working title The Sideways Nod.
Dalton's poetry has received various awards, including the TickleAce/Cabot Award for Poetry in 1998.
- Merrybegot won the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the Winterset Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Poetry Award, and the 2005 NL Heritage and History Award.
- Red Ledger was shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award.
- Hooking was shortlisted for the CBC Bookies Award, the J.M. Abraham Award for 2014, and the inaugural Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry in 2014. Hooking was also included on the 2017 CanLit150 list by the Toronto Word on the Street Festival.
Activities
Mary's activities as Poet Laureate include:
- Riddle Me This: an At Home Activity for Poetry Month, 2020
- Poetry Readings for World Poetry Day and National Poetry Month (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)
- Poetry podcast: Flahoolic
Previous Poet Laureates
- 2014-2017: George Murray
- 2010-2013: Tom Dawe
- 2006-2009: Agnes Walsh
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