The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. The winning poets receive $65,000 (Cdn) each and an additional $10,000 (Cdn) goes to each shortlisted poet who reads at the annual Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist Readings in Toronto, Canada.
Erin Moure, Griffin Poetry Prize 2002 Canadian Shortlist
In addition to the Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist, Erin Moure’sSheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person was also shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Moure’s earlier collection, A Frame of the Book, was co-published with House of Anansi Press Limited and Sun and Moon Press in the U.S. Anansi also published her Domestic Fuel, Furious and Search Procedures. Moure has won a Governor General’s Award for Poetry, The Pat Lowther Memorial Award, a QSPELL and National Magazine Award for Poetry, and is currently nominated for another Governor General’s Award for O Cidadán. Born in Calgary, Alberta, she attended the University of Calgary and University of British Columbia. Moure works as a translator and editor in Montreal.
“Erin Moure’s Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person is wry, clever, playful and lyrical. It is essentially, and beautifully, a love letter to that poet of fluid identities Fernando Pessoa. And it is also a love letter to Toronto, its vanished pastoral. Pessoa’s Tejo river is Moure’s Humber river. Her language, as his, is always doubled. She translates and recreates their shared sensations of nature’s plain existence, its material absolution.”
Erin Moure reads What, me, guard sheep?
What, me, guard sheep? by Erin Moure
What, me, guard sheep?
for Phil Hall
What, me, guard sheep? I made that up; this is poetry. It’s my soul that’s sheepish Knows wind and sun Grabs onto every Season and follows, looking. Nature’s peaceful today; it’s empty and it’s my pal. But it saddens me: what if sunset turns my lights out too when the parking lot goes cold and nightfall’s butterfly presses at my body, glass.
But being sad isn’t all bad, it’s fair enough and natural What else is a soul for? It’s so sure it exists when the hand cuts flowers, it doesn’t cry out.
Like the racket of the mail truck Coming around the curve of the avenue My thoughts are happy. Yet simply thinking this makes me glum, For if they weren’t happy, there’d be more variety: Instead of being happy and glum They’d be joyful and happy. What the heck.
Thinking bugs me, like walking in the rain When the bus goes by, a huge wind splattering greasy water.
Ambitions and desires? My head’s wet. Being a poet isn’t an ambition, it’s a version of being alone.
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