Each year, Concordia’s Department of English hands out prizes for excellence in the studies of English literature and creative writing. The Irving Layton Awards for Creative Writing, worth $500 each, are given to undergraduate students for works of poetry and fiction.
Jacqueline Hanna
To qualify for the poetry award, students must submit a portfolio of one or several poems.
The 2014 poetry award recipient was Jacqueline Hanna.
Hanna expects to graduate this spring with a joint honours in English and creative writing, then hopes to pursue a master’s in creative writing.
The Montreal native says her award-winning poem, barging in, was inspired by the Canadian literature she read in her program.
barging in
By Jacqueline Hanna
All afternoon wide Port Moody’s schooner
baits my interest. Lithest, no schooner
clips along beside her, each schooner
daft as a flat ale, or some Moses schooner
edging out Nile-lazy. Hot gusting swells, and schooner
facile in morning grows afternoon gauche, tho’ schooner
given half a chance might schooner
half a chance redeem, I chide. Hitting Big Schooner
Island out near Halifax. Or Schooner
Joliette I imagine whale watching, tall Schooner
Kootenays, or Confederation Schooner,
legislative big bateau Senate Schooner
marking off the long territories. Schooner
northwinding runs out of breath. Arctic schooner
opposed, motion melted and defeated. Schooner
parliament won’t let anyone new aboard the schooner:
quaint policy that’ll bite back schooner
rather than later. I look again, blue schooner
slipping down the dime, jingling schooner
to jingling schooner, & think of old Mac, one schooner
under flag and crown. Bowing out, schooner
veers portside at the thought. Then bright red schooner,
wagon-red, grabs the knots Schooner
X laid out, like Bell’s tin cable. Schooner
yowling starboard, then flanked, schooner
zinger received, copy: never go it alone, schooner.
© Concordia University