James Pollock's blog

Delighted to learn that Sailing to Babylon has been given an Honorable Mention (that is, it was named the runner-up) for the 2012 Posner Poetry Book Award by the Council for Wisconsin Writers. Congratulations to the winner, Sarah Busse, and her book Somewhere Piano, and warm thanks to the judge, Jennifer Reeser! For the full list of winners in all genres, click here.

Wonderful to read Chris Jennings' appreciative review of Sailing to Babylon in issue 70 of Arc Poetry Magazine. ​He writes, "in Sailing to Babylon, the formalism—the regular stanza patterns, sonnets, and the long poem in terza rima—prepares you to think about the fine line between an advanced knowledge of the rules of traditional poetic form and a mastery of the subtleties of traditional poetics. When a poet deploys tradition gracefully, as James Pollock has, the pleasure in the poems also renews my affection for tradition." A warm thank you to Chris!

I'm happy to announce that my book You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, is a finalist for the 2013 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays. For the list of other finalists, including Rick Bass and Gerald Stern, click here.

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be editing, and writing an introduction for, The Essential Daryl Hine, a volume of selected poems in the Essential Poets Series published by The Porcupine's Quill. The book is scheduled to appear in 2014. For information about Hine, see an earlier blog post on this site, announcing his recent death.

Tom Dillingham reviews Sailing to Babylon enthusiastically in the winter 2013 issue of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing. For the full review, click the link and scroll to page 247. For a brief excerpt, click "Read more" below.
 

In this interview, I name the desire behind You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, and discuss the relationship between poetry and criticism for the poet-critic, among other things.

Gregory McCormick, Director of Programming at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, picks my book Sailing to Babylon as one of his favorites among this year's Governor General's Award finalists. Thanks Gregory!

What a joy to read at the Governor General's Award finalists' reading at the Atwater Library in Montreal, Canada, on November 1, 2012. The event was part of the Atwater Poetry Project reading series. It was a wonderful evening, not least because I felt so welcomed by so many fellow poets. To listen, click here.

In this interview, I describe my initiation into poetry, compare the poetry scene in Canada and the U.S., and much more.

What a pleasure to read critic Michael Lista's appreciative review of Sailing to Babylon in the National Post, a major newspaper in Canada. In this first response to the book in print, Lista considers "the enduring beauty of [the long poem] 'Quarry Park,' and of Sailing to Babylon as a whole." My warm thanks to Michael!