Winners of the How Poems Work Student Essay Contest 2010

Arc is pleased to announce the winners of our How Poems Work Contest. Our National Winner is Lise Gaston of Victoria BC for her analysis of Lorna Crozier’s “What the Snake Brings to the World”. Judge Chris Jennings was impressed by “Gaston’s ability to address several facets of the poem without losing sight of the whole composition. When she talks about source texts, they support rather than determine how she reads Crozier’s poem. When she talks about sound, she acknowledges how important our expectations are to the effect sound has on meaning, and when she talks about meaning, her interpretation is convincing and conclusive without being limiting: it’s true without being the ‘singular’ ‘truth’. “

Honourable mentions go to Nicholas Shuurman of Tillsonburg, Celyn Harding-Jones of Montreal, Susan Steudel of Vancouver, and Julie Lockhart of Calgary. “Shuurman’s reading of Anne Michaels’s ‘Phantom Limbs’ works the central metaphor with confidence and sensitivity. Harding-Jones’s approach to Rita Wong’s ‘write around the absence’ integrates insights on sound, shape, and sense in its brief and attentive analysis. Steudel engages with the intellectual backdrop of Phyllis Webb’s “Socrates” to discuss how effectively Webb addresses the heart via the head, and Lockhart moves through the various associative shifts of Don McKay’s “Dreamskaters” with an ease that mimics the poem’s. There were a number of other impressive entries, and, on the whole, the submissions impressed me with their intellectual sensitivity, their emotional attentiveness, and their concern for technique. Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all who submitted.”

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