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I had a really good time jurying for @CanadianPoets this year with @KikiFolle & @adebe_ and wanted to suggest everyone go find and read these twelve longlisted debuts.
http://poets.ca/2019/04/01/2019-book-awards-longlist-announcement/
http://poets.ca/2019/04/01/2019-book-awards-longlist-announcement/
I would also like to note that mornings like this bring net more disappointment and confusion than joy for new writers and I want to speak a little to and for the other authors whose work we read this year. The Lampert list can feel like something of a class photo...
...for the year's debuting poets and if you're someone who didn't make the list (gestures at myself circa 2008) it can feel silencing. What I'll say is this: when I read through the submitted books first I made a list just called "Books I Liked" thinking I'd hopefully
...come up with enough titles to contribute to the longlist. I came up with 40. I liked (felt grateful to and enjoyed my time with) a list of poets four times as long as the above. And I can imagine alternate lists just as strong and varied and weird and beautiful as this.
If you put three people in a jury room, they'll come up with an expression of taste in context. If you switch the people out, the list will change. If the people read the books in a different order, the list will change. If you dim the lighting in the room, the list will change.
Your book's presence or absence on this list indicates nothing beyond the scope of this required-reading exercise. Lists are not your audience. When they give a book an award, they put a sticker on its cover but they don't touch the poems inside.
