Madison resident James Pollock’s book Sailing to Babylon, which received CWW’s 2012 Posner Poetry Book Award honorable mention, is being recognized in his native country of Canada. Sailing to Babylon is a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award in poetry and is on the Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian Shortlist.
Here’s the Griffin Prize Judges’ Citation:
“The sentence, in James Pollock’s remarkably assured debut volume, is a unit of music and of time, a carefully modulated choreography that moves the reader through an elegantly constructed set of meditations on place and history and the education of the self — a self we come to know, in part, through the poet’s evocation of a rich company of tutelary spirits: Glenn Gould and Northrop Frye, Henry Hudson and C.P. Cavafy. Quietly confident, formally adept, assured in their music, these artful lyrics are not only an accomplishment in themselves but promise to register, as the poet says, ‘the breaking changes of a life to come’.” – Mark Doty
That, plus a summary of the book, Pollock’s bio and other writing credits are at http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2013-shortlist/james-pollock/?PHPSESSID=c18c4aca897684e40a5122dff749e037
CWW is pleased to be in such good company and sends congratulations to Prof. Pollock, who teaches poetry in the creative-writing program at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.
Read about Pollock and other CWW award winners and honorable mentions at http://www.wiswriters.org/2012%20winners.htm