Poet Laureate Map of Canada
Who funds poet laureate appointments?

Usually the municipality or province will sponsor the position. Owen Sound’s laureate is the only one funded by members of the business community, rather than tax payers. Cobalt’s poet laureate is funded by several generous cultural entrepreneurs.

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2010 Griffin Poetry Prize Winners

2010 Canadian and International winners of the tenth annual Griffin Poetry Prize. [details]
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King
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Poet Laureate Map of Canada

Map Candice James - Poet Laureate of New Westminster, B.C. Roger Nash, Sudbury, Ontario Jill Battson, Cobourg, Ontario pj johnson, Poet Laureate of the Yukon Kristan Anderson, Owen Sound Ontario Roland Pemberton - Poet Laureate of Edmonton, AlbertaBrad Cran - Poet Laureate of Vancouver, B.C. Poet Laureate of Newfoundland: Agnes Walsh Linda Rogers - Poet Laureate of Victoria, B.C. Douglas Lochhead, Sackville, New Brunswick Shauntay Grant - Poet Laureate of Halifax, Nova Scotia John B. Lee, Brantford Ontario Dionne Brand, Toronto, Ontario Pierre DesRuisseaux - Parliamentary Poet Laureate - Ottawa Hugh MacDonald, Prince Edward Island Robert Currie, Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan Gary Hyland, Poet Laureate, City of Moose Jaw, SK Poet Laureate of Cobalt Ann Margetson

George McWhirter

George McWhirter

First Poet Laureate of Vancouver, B.C.
  2007 - 2009

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and educated at Queen's University Belfast, where he was a classmate of Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney and the Irish literary critic, Robert Dunbar. George McWhirter came to Canada and Vancouver Island in 1966, leaving for Vancouver in 1968. 

On March 13th, 2007 he was inaugurated as Vancouver's first Poet Laureate. He is the author of eight books of verse, editor and translator of poetry by major Mexican poets and has won the Commonwealth Prize for poetry, the FR Scott Prize for Translation, and the Ethel Wilson Prize at the BC. Book Awards for fiction.

For almost thirty years he was the Advisory Editor of PRISM international magazine. He is a translator of his verse and friend of Homero Aridjis, who has just been appointed as Mexico's Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris.

At UBC he won two Killam prizes, one for Teaching and one for Mentoring, as well as the Sam Black award for his contribution to the Creative & Performing Arts. His version of HECUBA by Euripides will be/was performed by the Blackbird Theatre Company at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, December 28, 2007 - January 12, 2008. 

Links of Interest
 
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© 2010 Owen Sound and North Grey Union Public Library | All Rights Reserved