Burnaby’s Cecily Nicholson has earned the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry for her book Wayside Sang. Photograph By CONTRIBUTED
It’s official: Burnaby is home to a Governor General’s Literary Award winner.
Cecily Nicholson earned the award, announced on October 30, for poetry for her book Wayside Sang, published by Talonbooks.
The judges’ comments described her work as “hypnotic.”
“Cecily Nicholson makes room, offering glimpses and echoes of the Canadian landscape as she explores ideas of borders, identity, industry and travel,” said the comments from Garry Gottfriedson, Sachiko Murakami and Patrick Warner. “She offers a catalogue of impressions, a collage of the ephemeral, held together by image and the pulsing phrase that stays with you long after the journey’s over.”
In an interview with the NOW after her nomination was announced, Nicholson spoke about her love of poetry as a vehicle for storytelling.
“The thing about poetry that really does draw me in is a sense of freedom, about what potential there is with words on a page,” she said. “Poetry can work with or beyond structures. There’s a lot of opportunity to consider language in very deep and meaningful ways, and in doing so growing one’s understanding of the language, how we use it, what it means to us, how it shapes us. I feel it’s a very active thing. I suppose it’s a way of theorizing and of observing the world.
“At the end of the day I also love language. I love words.”
The Governor General’s Literary Award – also known as GGBooks - winners include 14 of the best Canadian books in seven categories for both official languages, chosen by peer assessment committees at the Canada Council for the Arts.
“With emotion, daring, magic, profound ideas and just the right words, this year’s GGBooks winners again remind us how essential Canadian literature is to our lives,” said Simon Brault, Canada Council director and CEO, in a press release.
Other English-language winners included Sarah Henstra’s The Red Word for fiction; Jordan Tannahill’s Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom for drama; Darrel J. McLeod’s Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age for non-fiction; Jonathan Auxier’s Sweep: The Story of a Girl and her Monster, for Young People’s Literature (text); Jillian Tamaki’s They Say Blue for Young People’s Literature (illustrated books); and Descent into Night, translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott, for translation (French to English).
