Events: Atlantic Poetry Prize

I’ll be making several appearances in support of the Atlantic Book Awards, in which I’ve been shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize, starting May 9th and leading up to the award ceremony on the 12th, and then in St. John’s shortly after. If you’re handy to any of these venues, I’d love to see you there. Details below.

May 9th, 7pm
Reading with: Don Domanski, Anne Simpson, and Herménégilde Chiasson
Saint John, NB – University of New Brunswick, Ward Chipman Building, Study Lounge

May 10th, 3:30pm
Reading with Don Domanski
Charlottetown, PE – Confederation Centre Library

May 12th, 4pm
Atlantic Book Awards Ceremony
Dartmouth, NS – Alderney Theatre

May 15th, 7pm
Reading with Marq de Villiers and Bernice Morgan
St. John’s, NL – The Studio, 272 Water Street

My thanks to the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia for organizing and footing the bill for all this travel, and to the Writers Alliance of Newfoundland Labrador for hosting the St. John’s reading.

News: Atlantic Poetry Prize Shortlist

The Rush to Here has been shorlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize along with Don Domanski’s All Our Wonder Unavenged and Anne Simpson’s Quick. I’m very pleased to be in such good company for such a great award.

I’ll be in the Atlantic provinces in May as part of the award tour with readings in St. John, Charlottetown, Halifax, and St. John’s. Details to follow.

Events: Princeton Reminder

As a reminder to whomever might wander in here from down New Jersey way, I will be reading at Princeton this Monday as part of a two event stint at the great Ivy League school. I’m very much looking forward to reading with poet James Richardson, whose is famous in part for his aphorisms—a fortuitous choice of reading partner because quite a number of readers have mentioned that the aphorism-like couplets that act as unifiers for the octave- and sestet-like elements of many of the sonnets in my new book have been among their favourite aspects of the work.

Monday, March 3, 7:30
Trinity Church, Princeton
with James Richardson
(public reading)

Tuesday, March 4, 4:30pm
209 Scheide Caldwell House, Princeton
(students and faculty only)

Review: The Domimion

My pal and colleague Amanda Jernigan pointed out this review at the grassroots indie journalism site The Dominion by email, under the subject heading “Dept. of brightening one’s day” — and it surely does. The reviews have been almost uniformly positive to this point, which pleases me more than I thought it would!

The Rush to Here
George Murray
Nightwood Editions, 2007

This new collection of poems from George Murray contains something truly new; he has written a series of sonnets using an entirely novel kind of rhyme. It sounds unlikely, but the results more than justify the flouting of convention. The rhymes are sometimes based on sound (as in homophones), but more often centered around meaning – synonyms, antonyms, association, etc. To illustrate from a randomly chosen sonnet, “Lullaby”: Murray rhymes ‘utmost’ with ‘paramount,’ ‘receive’ with ‘tuned’ (think radios), ‘signal’ with ‘pulse,’ ‘light’ with ‘dawn,’ ‘time’ with ‘ancestor,’ ‘does’ with ‘execute,’ and ‘rage’ with ‘blaze.’ While some writers might be tempted to let the innovation carry the collection, hoping for an audience enamoured of formal poetry, Murray takes the time to craft each poem into something thought-provoking and beautiful, so that a reader unfamiliar with sonnets might still be enthralled. In terms of subject matter, Murray covers a lot of ground – from reflections on parenthood to the implications of quantum physics, from the sex lives of the Devil and the Greek gods to the annoyance of home renovations. The Rush to Here is worth rushing out for.

Events: Princeton University

I’ll be reading twice at Princeton in March, as both a guest of the Canadian Studies Department and Trinity Church. I’ll update the details below as they become available. The first reading will have local poets attached, and I’m excited to see who they might be. If you’re in the area and can make it, please stop by.

Monday, March 3, 7:30
Trinity Church, Princeton
with James Richardson
(public reading)

Tuesday, March 4, 4:30pm
209 Scheide Caldwell House, Princeton
(students and faculty only)

I’ll take an extra day ahead to visit some friends in my old NYC stomping grounds.

Review: Scandinavian Airlines Magazine

Behold the bizarre wonder of the world wide web. The following is an entire review of The Rush to Here (pdf) printed in a Scandinavian Airlines Magazine and hosted at the website of an unopened resort in Sri Lanka — note that none of the books reviewed are illustrated with the correct picture.

THE RUSH TO HERE
George Murray
NIGHTWOOD EDITIONS
The fourth poetry collection from the founding editor of the excellent Book Ninja site comprises 96 pages of sonnets that transcend the traditional limitations of formal verse. Highly imaginative, and yet surprisingly approachable and immediately accessible.

I feel like standing up to salute the insanity that is the internet.

Event: BookFestWindsor

I’ll be appearing this coming weekend at BookFestWindsor. If you’re in town, please stop by one of the events and grab a book.

Publishing Panel (also appearing: Beatriz Hausner, John Metcalf, Derek Weiler, Dan Wells)
November 3, 5pm
Wilkinson Room (Main Floor)
Art Gallery of Windsor

Poetry Reading (also appearing: Stephen Cain, Dennis Cooley, Beatriz Hausner, Susan Holbrook, Tanis MacDonald, Karl Jirgens)
November 3, 5pm
Valiant / Rodzik (3rd Floor)
Art Gallery of Windsor

We can all retire to the Casino afterwards and try to break the bank.

Review: Lemon Hound

Another very positive review for The Rush to Here, this time from the US, and forwarded to me by a friend. (Excerpt below). After last week’s trip to Chicago and Manhattan to read, I was somewhat surprised and very pleased to come home with a few more course list placements for the book. It seems prof-types really get off on the use of concepts in place of sounds for fulfilling the rhyme obligations of the sonnet. It allows students access to the mechanics of the form while reading in their own vernacular. Plus, they seem to like the poems themselves. (One such academic writes: “your book, which I’ve been reading, is kicking my ass. Come spring, know that you’re officially on the syllabus.” I like professors who talk like that.) Lemon Hound seems more interested in the emotional quality of the poetry, which is a nice contrast to those impressed with the technical fun.

George Murray, in his latest book, just out with Nightwood, and a much more emotionally engaging and present book than his earlier two with M&S, soars.

Perhaps this is a poet coming into his own, a poet back in Canada, a poet settling into poetry, but there is more lightness here, more range, and a directness of voice–clear the speaker, clear the audience, that line, very direct. These are companionable poems. Mind, they aren’t a perfect companion for this poet, but I can certainly recognize their companionability and further, can imagine them being carried around and dogeared. For this poet, that is the ultimate compliment.
…
What makes this poetry interesting to me, aside from its formal concerns, is its willingness to wonder about the human condition, not simply to describe, or tell (more on this as I work on an essay on lyric, Jan Zwicky and Anne Simpson). I can go far with any voice that creates a space for me in a poem, a poet that invites me into their world (world that rings true). I grow so weary of the faux revelations in poetry, the earnest tone that mocks sincerity. There’s none of that here.

Events: US Tour

Hi all, I’m off to Chicago and New York City to give some readings and have some drinks with old friends. Please see below. Even if I don’t know you (ESPECIALLY if I don’t), please come out and say hi.

Chicago:

The Bookslut Reading Series
October 4 at 7:30pm
Hopleaf (see here for info and map)

New York:

The Frequency Reading Series
October 7 at 2:30pm
The Four-Faced Liar (see here for info and map)

If other events are added, I’ll let you know here.

Review: Winnipeg Free Press

When I gave a reading last week in Winnipeg, a smartly-dressed fellow showed up with my book already in-hand. Turns out he was Maurice Mierau, the poetry reviewer for the Free Press. He seemed like a nice guy so, luckily, what he had to say was also nice:

St. John’s writer George Murray’s third book is The Rush to Here (Nightwood, 84 pages, $17). It consists entirely of sonnets, and is dedicated to the late Richard Outram, whose formalist poems were quite distinct from the loose conversational tone of most Canadian poetry.

The Autumn of Our Sameness is one of many beautiful pieces here, ending with this couplet: The leaves shiver themselves from the branches,/ much as a half-year back the seeds jumped from the twigs.”

Murray captures the rhetorical shape of the sonnet while avoiding its traditional prosody. He rarely goes into blank verse, and mostly eschews even near-rhyme.

This limits his acoustic palette, but he writes strikingly, usually structuring the pieces around linked metaphors. Often these links move into an achingly expressive line, like Push, whose second-last stanza ends “Lie here with me a bit and say the past exists.” Murray has a powerful ability to synthesize disparate ideas within a poem. A Silent Film, for example, moves from ancient triremes to silent films to contemporary storms and television. What might be messy in an open form is brilliantly contained in the traditional shape of the sonnet.

Remember to buy a copy at your local bookstore or, barring that, through somewhere a little larger today.