May 16, 2007, press release
The Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador Announces the Winners of The 2007 Newfoundland and Labrador Book AwardsSt John's, NL: Patrick Warner, Winner, The E J Pratt Poetry Award for There, there, Véhicule Press, 2005, and Gerhard P Bassler, Winner, Rogers Cable Non-fiction Award for Vikings to U-Boats: The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006.The winners were announced at 2:30pm yesterday, May 15, at a special celebration held at Government House, St John's, NL. This year marks the 11th year of the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards. Winners were presented with a check for $1,500 and each finalist was awarded $500. Judges for Poetry Literature were Mark Callanan, George Murray, and Alison Pick. Judges for Non-fiction were Anne Budgell, Degan Davis, and Kathleen Winter. Here's what the judges had to say about the winning books: In There, there, Patrick Warner practices his peculiar brand of alchemy, transmuting the commonplace, the pedestrian, into burnished gold. Though better to call it a Midas touch, for whatever painstaking work provoked this metamorphosis, the resulting poems are effortless in delivery, combining an impish spirit of enquiry with philosophical acuity. Warner has created an analogical universe in which a discarded sanitary napkin becomes a fairy tale slipper, slaughtered pigs perform modern dance routines, and spiritual sublimity can be glimpsed in the Mother Theresa – minus "tea-towel veil" – head of a giant tortoise. Through its robust verbal energy and surreal metaphorical leaps, Warner's poetry exhorts us to rediscover not only the world itself, but its relationship to the language that conjures it. Gerhard Bassler's original work succeeds in dispelling what he calls the myth of Newfoundland and Labrador's purely British heritage. He does it with a tone of regret for what might have been, if not for two World Wars. It was German-speaking Moravian missionaries in Labrador who first created a written form for Inuktitut. German technology imported from Lunenberg influenced dory design in Newfoundland. Roman Catholic Bishop Fleming went to Hamburg to find an architect for his new Basilica in St John's. There were many more cultural and commercial contributions but Bassler points out that in this "closed society," Germans were always regarded as foreign. That is, until the events of two wars made things worse. Germans, even those who had done missionary service in Labrador for decades, were classed as potentially dangerous enemy aliens. The cloud of suspicion caused government authorities to deny Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich safe haven in Newfoundland. They had the same enemy, but they were too German to be welcome here. Bassler describes a small but vibrant German community, doing business, marrying, holding public office, and now gone. What lingers in Newfoundland is a stereotype created by wartime propaganda and faint traces of German presence in family names and Labrador Inuit who can still count in German. Other finalists included: Rogers Cable Non-fiction Award:
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Media contact: Shoshanna Wingate Executive Director Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador Tel: (709) 739-5215 E-mail: wanl@nf.aibn.com |
| The Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador operates with funds raised from membership dues, fundraising activities, corporate and private sponsorship, and with the financial support of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, City of St John's, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, which the Alliance gratefully acknowledges. | |
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