"In a market where 'skyrocketing' sales mean five books sold a week, do poetry prizes make any difference at all? Apparently, they do", writes James Adams from Monday's Globe & Mail.

Proclamations of the death of poetry have grown more insistent and numerous over the last 25 years, but this hasn't stopped a lot of people -- too many, some would argue -- from continuing to write it and, occasionally, see it published.

In fact, tomorrow, at ceremonies in Toronto and Montreal, two poets, one English, the other French, will receive $15,000 each as the winners of the 2006 Governor-General's Award for excellence in poetry. In a world where a print-run of 600 to 800 copies is the norm for a book of poetry and 1,000 is considered positively bullish, chances are good that whoever wins will enjoy the single biggest payday of his or her versifying career.

Five books -- Ken Babstock's Airstream Land Yacht, Home of Sudden Service by Elizabeth Bachinsky, Inventory by Dionne Brand, John Pass'sStumbling in the Bloom and Sharon Thesen's The Good Bacteria -- were named to the English-language shortlist in October, culled by a three-member jury from 123 submissions published between Sept. 1 last year and Sept. 30 this. (The French-language shortlist also numbers five.)

Poets, poetry publishers and readers like to believe that the G-G generates "a bit of media fanfare for [the] genre," as Barbara Carey, a Toronto poet, wrote recently on CBC.ca. But mostly that fanfare resonates within a decidedly itty-bitty world. Even the six-year-old Griffin Poetry Prize, which each spring splits a whopping $100,000 between a Canadian poet and an international poet, has yet to discover a vast reservoir of unplumbed readerly demand. And the Griffin Prize, in the words of one Toronto publisher, "is definitely bigger than the G-Gs."

Interestinly, Adams provides the Top 5 books of poetry, by sales in 2006.

1. Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen (McClelland & Stewart)
2. Stranger Music by Leonard Cohen ( M&S)
3. Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me by Maya Angelou (Random House)
4. Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets by Al Purdy (Harbour Publishing)
5. Beowulf by Seamus Heaney (W.W. Norton)

Comments (2)

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Eric Sande said:

The same article states that "Cohen's work was both the No. 1 poetry book in Canada and the country's 76th bestseller overall. To date, it's sold more than 20,000 copies, a substantial number". Oh, you forgot to link to the article?which I googled and found here.

November 28, 2006

Daniel Sendecki said:

Thanks Eric, for pointing that out?I had meant to include it as the source at the end of the article with a read more link?I will fix this tonight!

November 28, 2006

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