By Shoshanna Wingate
Carmelita McGrath holds a singular place in the heart of Newfoundland poetry. For an island that loves its poets, this is not a consolation prize for the weird auntie who likes her hats big and bright, but a heartfelt space created for a poet who inspired so many in their development. . . .
Photo by Kerri Cull
By Jeffery Donaldson
Richard Greene begins: “I am at home in a high-rise.” You want to catch the nuance there: the descent motif, finding one’s ground among the contemporary urban domiciles; but also the ascent, the daily routine struggling to rise above itself. Greene’s poems are high-risers that seek a lifting leverage in high-rises. . . .
By George Murray
A transplanted Irishman, Warner fits into the Newfoundland anthology in two ways — first, as a poet who had a significant connection to the Rock before the publication of his first book (he’s been here for 33 years); and second, as a man of wit and stories from a culture of wit and stories. . . .
By Susan Gillis
Rereading the poems collected here, it strikes me that this kind of liminal space is one Sue occupies regularly, at least in poetry. . . .
By Lynn Davies
Some of Mary Dalton’s poems in the Breakwater anthology are brief stories or monologues informed by a vocabulary that also speeds up the telling. Reading “Bridesboys” and “Merrybegot” out loud to myself is a bit like being read to as a child; I hear strange words — brindy bough, upsot, nuzzle-tripe. . . .
By Katia Grubisic
With the publication of the 1999 Mean, from which two of the poems in the Breakwater book are taken, Babstock stood at the cusp of a new Canadian poetics — post-nationalist but snapped in place; as easily confessional as prevaricating, and sometimes simultaneously; and demanding such acrobatics of language. . . .
By John Steffler
I was fortunate to meet Al shortly after moving to Newfoundland in 1975. My whole experience of Newfoundland opened through him and his family, through his parents, their stories and the times I spent in their generous company. . . . Photo courtesy of Newfoundland Heritage
By Stan Dragland
The selection brings out Agnes’s muscular nostalgia for the individualistic Newfoundland past of which her father was a dear part. . . .
By Richard Kelly Kemick
Despite the multitude of successful Newfoundland poets to choose from, Mark Callanan and James Langer’s inclusion of Tom Dawe into Breakwater’s Contemporary Newfoundland Poetry Anthology may indeed have been a no-brainer. . . .
By Ian LeTourneau
Fiddlehead editor Ross Leckie and I reached out to poets across the country to get their perspective on the 11 poets selected. We didn't want an overly complex analysis of the featured work, nor did we want to call into question the editors' selection. We wanted poets simply responding to poets. . . .
