Johanna Skibsrud has captured the 2017 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry.
The Royal City Literary Arts Society made the announcement on Wednesday, Nov. 1. The award is open to Canadian writers with English-language books of poetry published in the past year.
Skibsrud won the $500 top prize for her book The Description of the World (A Bookrider Book/Wolsak and Wynn).
Timothy Shay took second place and $250 for The Dirty Knees of Prayer (Caitlin Press), and Eva Tihanyi won third place and $100 for The Largeness of Rescue (Inanna Publications).
Also shortlisted for 2017 were Carla Funk for Gloryland (Turnstone Press), Shirley Graham for Shakespearean Blues (Mother Tongue Publishing), Margo Wheaton for The Unlit Path Behind the House (McGill-Queen’s University Press) and Jan Zwicky for The Long Walk (University of Regina Press).
An awards ceremony is set for Saturday, Nov. 25 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St., in Room 417.
On hand for the awards presentations will be 2017 judge Candice James, the city’s poet laureate emerita, and Kathleen Forsythe, the daughter of Fred Cogswell. Cogswell, who died in 2004, was a prolific poet, editor and professor, a life member of the League of Canadian Poets and an Officer of the Order of Canada.
See www.rclas.com for full details.
