On Friday, March 23, David Zieroth, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry will be in Sechelt to read from his work.
Zieroth's poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies across Canada and in the U.S. Fourteen collections of his poetry have been published beginning with Clearing: Poems from a Journey in 1970.
In 1998 he was awarded the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. In 2003 The Education of Mr. Whippoorwill: A Country Boyhood was selected as one of the top 10 books of the year by the Globe and Mail.
The Fly in Autumn, published in 2009, received the Governor General's Award. And this was an award richly deserved.
The Fly in Autumn shows a poet at the height of his powers. Containing many of the themes of his earlier work - the contrast of dark and light, of night and day, reason and feeling - and still constantly searching for meaning and truth in our humdrum, often ugly, quotidian existence, The Fly in Autumn does not have the rage so evident before. There is a new balance, even moments of vivid humour, but that balance is always tenuous, ephemeral and beautifully expressed. As the fly in the title poem says: "And even so, my wings/carry me, and what thinness/upon which to rely." Zieroth concurs.
Zieroth will be reading at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt (located at Trail and Medusa) at 8 p.m. Admission is free thanks to the sponsorship of this series of readings by the Canada Council for the Arts.
- Submitted
