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.
Karen Solie, Griffin Poetry Prize 2002 Canadian Shortlist
In addition to the Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist, Karen Solie’s first book of poems, Short Haul Engine, also recently won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, sponsored by the B.C. Book Prizes. As well, the book is shortlisted for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award, and for the National Magazine Award for poetry. Karen Solie’s poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals, including The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Event, Indiana Review, ARC, Other Voices, and The Capilano Review. She has also had her poetry published in the anthologies Breathing Fire (Harbour, 1995), Hammer and Tongs (Smoking Lung, 1999), and Introductions: Poets Present Poets (Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2001) and one of her short stories featured in The Journey Prize Anthology 12. Born in Moose Jaw, Solie grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and presently, an English teacher.
Solie’s second collection of poetry, Modern and Normal, was published in the fall of 2005.
“Karen Solie’s first book of poems, Short Haul Engine – a nice phrase for poetry – stood out for its mix of physical impressions, perceptual strength, and – especially – mental grace. A kind of liveliness, agility, connectivity. In ‘Early in Winter,’ one of her many car poems, she writes: ‘feet cold, heart wagging its little tail.’ Grief shows: ‘what is not in everything/ there is; and all/ it wants to talk about/ is you.’ A monstrous old fish, a sturgeon, is hauled out of the water by some teenagers, but then, // when he began to heave and thrash over yards of rock/ to the water’s edge and, unbelievably, in,/ we couldn’t hold him though we were teenaged/ and bigger than everything. Could not contain/ the old current he had for a mind, its pull,/ and his body a muscle called river, called spawn.’
There is toughness here, as well as grace. Often in her pages, we encounter wisdom of a severity that we would almost rather not know. A cold person is a different species; there is a dismal companionship in grief, the water stays in the fish, even when the fish is out of the water. Short Haul Engine is not just an exceptional debut, it is an exceptional book.”
Karen Solie reads Sturgeon
Sturgeon, by Karen Solie
Sturgeon
Jackfish and walleye circle like clouds as he strains the silt floor of his pool, a lost lure in his lip, Five of Diamonds, River Runt, Lazy Ike, or a simple spoon, feeding a slow disease of rust through his body’s quiet armour. Kin to caviar, he’s an oily mudfish. Inedible. Indelible. Ancient grunt of sea in a warm prairie river, prehistory a third eye in his head. He rests, and time passes as water and sand through the long throat of him, in a hiss, as thoughts of food. We take our guilts to his valley and dump them in, give him quicksilver to corrode his fins, weed killer, gas oil mix, wrap him in poison arms. Our bottom feeder, sin-eater.
On an afternoon mean as a hook we hauled him up to his nightmare of us and laughed at his ugliness, soft sucker mouth opening, closing on air that must have felt like ground glass, left him to die with disdain for what we could not consume. And when he began to heave and thrash over yards of rock to the water’s edge and, unbelievably, in, we couldn’t hold him though we were teenaged and bigger than everything. Could not contain the old current he had for a mind, its pull, and his body a muscle called river, called spawn.
The following are links to other Web sites with information about poet Karen Solie. (Note: All links to external Web sites open in a new browser window.)
