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.
Leslie Greentree, Griffin Poetry Prize 2004 Canadian Shortlist
Leslie Greentree’s first book of poetry, guys named Bill (Frontenac House, 2002) was followed a year later by go-go dancing for Elvis (Frontenac House, 2003). In 2004, she won the CBC Poetry Face-off for Calgary, and competed in the National Face-off. ‘Fargo’s, Whyte Avenue’, a poem from go-go dancing for Elvis, was selected for inclusion in Writing Alberta: An Anthology by Dr. Robert Stamp (U of C Press). In spring 2006, Greentree published her first volume of short stories, entitled A Minor Planet for You.
As well as working full-time at Red Deer Public Library, Greentree does freelance writing and acts as associate editor for a Central Alberta cultural tabloid called artichoke. She has read across Alberta, as well as in Saskatoon, Humboldt and Toronto, and is a featured reader at the Moose Jaw Festival of Words this summer, and the South Country Fair in Fort McLeod, Alberta. She has also been a featured reader at various other literary festivals, including the popular Word on the Street Festival in Calgary. Greentree is one of several organizers of Crossing Place: Red Deer Writers’ Festival, a day-long literary festival featuring writers from Central Alberta and beyond. She serves on two cultural boards in Red Deer. Born in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Greentree earned a B.A. (English) and a B.Ed. at the University of Lethbridge.
See also: Griffin Trustee Robin Robertson, Griffin Poetry Prize 2004 shortlisted poets Leslie Greentree and David Kirby, and Griffin Poetry Prize 2003 shortlisted poet Gerald Stern were joined by the 2005 Canadian and International winners Roo Borson and Charles Simic on a triumphal tour to the Dublin Writers Festival in June, 2005. Leslie, David and Roo kept a lively blog of the trip, which you can read here.
Judges’ Citation
“Leslie Greentree is a conversational poet whose artful talk is not afraid to engage any subject head-on. Her unpretentious, sometimes comic, lower-case poems have an irresistible charm. They pull us into the funk and drama of her everyday experience and, further, into the center of her interior life.”
Leslie Greentree reads “if I was a gate”
“if I was a gate”, by Leslie Greentree
“if I was a gate”
I thought I loved the cordless screwdriver but this is something else altogether I hold my shiny new electric drill listen to its high-pitched whine it is fairly leaping in my hand tingling through my arm my shoulder waking all my bones
I am a surgeon drilling tidy holes precise and perfect I blow off the dust step back to admire my handiwork brandish my shrieking drill step in again
you have to make small notches first you see, in the cupboard doors I could pull out my old battered hammer use brute force I prefer to take the bit in hand push it gently into the soft wood make the small circular motions that create the slot it will slide into naturally otherwise it jumps around eager but awkward until you guide it home
there is that small moment as the drill bit pauses seeks slips in a second’s resistance before it sinks I feel the wood yield under my steady singing pressure the bit bores deeper and deeper until with a start I feel it I am through
now this is power like when a lover leaves and your fear turns into the sudden realization that you can do it for yourself just as well or better and you don’t have to listen to the same Monty Python story over and over and over through the course of a long beery evening either
Darryl showed me what to do in Totem it felt heavy and alien in my hands I wanted to throw myself at his feet beg him to come home with me drill my first hole
now I’m laughing aloud fiercely proud of the naked apertures racing across my kitchen like a banner now I’m looking around my house wondering what else I can plunge this into
I didn’t put music on wanting nothing to interfere with the insouciant shrieking seduction of my electric drill the song fragment that loops through my mind: if I was a gate I’d be swinging
The following are links to other Web sites with information about poet Di Brandt. (Note: All links to external Web sites open in a new browser window.)
