Carolyn Marie Souaid

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Carolyn Marie Souaid
CarolynMarieSouaidPromo.jpg
Photograph taken in 2010 by Monique Dykstra
Born(1959-08-01)August 1, 1959
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Occupationwriter, editor, educator
LanguageEnglish, French
EducationBachelor, Master of Arts
Alma mater McGill University, Concordia University
Genrepoetry

Carolyn Marie Souaid (born 1 August 1959) is a Canadian poet, educator, publisher and editor. [1]

Contents

Biography

Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, she studied at McGill University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature (1981) and a diploma in Education (1983), and at Concordia University, where she earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing (1995). Her first poetry collection, Swimming into the Light, won the David McKeen Award for Poetry in 1996. Her books have been nominated for a number of literary awards in Canada including the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Pat Lowther Award.

Souaid's work focuses on pivotal moments in Québécois history [2] and on the difficult bridging of worlds (English/French; native/non-native). [3] In 2010, she and longtime poetic collaborator Endre Farkas produced Blood is Blood, a controversial video-poem dealing with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. [4]

Well known for her activism on the Montreal literary scene, [5] [6] [7] Souaid co-produced Poetry in Motion in 2004 (which brought poems to Montreal buses [8] ) and Circus of Words / Cirque des mots, a multidisciplinary, multilingual cabaret showcasing the "theatre" of poetry. [9] In 2009, she co-founded Poetry Quebec, an online review dedicated to the English language poetry and poets of Quebec. [10] From 2008 to 2011, she served as poetry editor for Signature Editions, one of Canada's top publishers of poetry. [11]

Souaid has lived most of her life in Montreal, except for three years spent teaching in Inuit villages along Quebec's Hudson-Ungava coast in the early 1980s. [12]

Selected works

Poetry

Fiction

Editor (selected publications)

Critical reception

Carolyn Marie Souaid's fourth collection of poetry, Satie's Sad Piano… is a fine achievement in attempting to explain the importance of Pierre Elliott Trudeau - and his passing, five years ago - for the national imagination. … This long poem is perhaps the first serious effort to encompass the nation since Dennie Lee's problematically Ontario centric/Torontonian Civil Elegies appeared in 1868 and 1972 [13]

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Dial-A-Poem Montreal was a phone-based service started in 1985 by Fortner Anderson, who was inspired by John Giorno's Dial-A-Poem and wanted to expand poetry beyond the limits of print. Listeners in Montreal could call 843-7636 (THE-POEM) anytime of the day to hear a poem. The service ran from September 1985 to July 1987 and ended because Anderson lacked the time and money needed for the project to continue. He produced the recordings himself and funded the project with his own money, sales of Clifford Duffy's first book Blue Dog Plus, individual sponsorships, and sponsorships by bookstores, local craftsmen, and schools. Participating bookstores included The Word Bookstore, Argo Bookshop, The Double Hook Book Shop, Steve Welch Books, and Véhicule Press. Anderson reported that in the first year, the service received about 200 phone calls a day and that over 150 poets contributed. He described the content of the poems as containing "themes of reaction to society's structures and structures, personal and social violence, topical issues of sex and gender, and people coping with alienation and the shifting ground of their own personalities."

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Claudia Lapp is a poet born in Stuttgart, Germany. She graduated from Bennington College in Vermont with a BA in French and German Literature, minor in Music, and then moved to Montreal, Quebec. She was a member of the Vehicule Poets, an experimental writing collective formed in Montreal in the 1970s and worked at John Abbott College in the English department and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art in the Education department. The other poets that she taught with in the English include David Solway, Peter van Toorn, Endre Farkas and Matthew von Baeyer. After being involved with the Montreal literary scene for eleven years from 1968 to 1979, she moved to Maryland and then Oregon in 1991. In 2002, she emceed a popular weekly poetry series at Cozmic Pizza in Eugene, Oregon. She has worked as an Exhibit Interpreter at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum for 8+ years. She is also a practicing astrologer and film photographer.

References

  1. "12 or 20 questions: 12 or 20 questions: With Carolyn Marie Souaid". May 2008.
  2. "Satie's Sad Piano, by Carolyn Marie Souaid". Archived from the original on 2011-07-24. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
  3. "October Crisis".
  4. "Duo speak to places cursed by tribal hatreds". Archived from the original on 2012-08-26. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
  5. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-19. Retrieved 2011-01-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. "QWF Literary Database of Quebec English-language Authors : Authors: View".
  7. "missing".
  8. Sutherland, Anne. "Words of a Somali Poet on Montreal Buses". The Gazette}date=April 23, 2004.
  9. "Montreal Mirror : 2006 Year in Review : Spoken Word". Archived from the original on 2012-06-30. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
  10. "The other PQ | the Link". Archived from the original on 2011-08-25. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
  11. "Signature Editions | About the Press". signature-editions.com.
  12. Souaid, C.1988. Inuit-controlled School System Clashes With Traditional Lifestyle. Information North: Newsletter of The Arctic Institute of North America 14:1-4.
  13. George Elliot Clarke. Goodison, Souaid Give Nation Voices. The Chronicle Herald, August 21, 2005.