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Seymour Mayne (born 1944 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian author, editor, translator of more than seventy books and monographs, and creative writing professor at the University of Ottawa [1] . As he has written about the Jewish Canadian poets, his work is recognizable by its emphasis on the human dimension, the translation of the experience of the immigrant and the outsider, the finding of joy in the face of adversity, and the linking with tradition and a strong concern with history in its widest sense.
He was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Doris Minkin and Henry Mayne. His father arrived in Canada as a refugee after World War I and his mother entered Canada just days before World War II broke out in Europe.
His latest books include Cusp: Word Sonnets (2014), September Rain (2005), and various editions in a number of languages of his innovative collection, Ricochet: Word Sonnets (2004). As a fervent innovator of the word sonnet, he has given readings and lectured widely in Canada and internationally on this unique new "miniature" form.
Over the years, his short stories have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies. The Old Blue Couch: Canadian Stories[El Viejo Sofá Azul: Cuentos Canadienses], a selection of his short fiction in Spanish translation, was published in Argentina in 2004. His literary works continue to receive much critical and scholarly attention internationally.
His writings have been translated into many languages, including French, German, Hebrew, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. In addition, six collections of his poetry have been rendered into Hebrew, including a major volume of his selected poems, Fly Off into the Strongest Light [Leensok letoch haor hachi chazak: Mevchar shirim] (2009).
As a scholar and editor, he has edited many anthologies and critical texts in Canadian literature, including Essential Words: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry, a comprehensive and pioneer work in the field which includes writing by such key figures as A.M. Klein, Miriam Waddington, and Phyllis Gotlieb. He has also co-edited the award-winning anthologies, Jerusalem: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry and A Rich Garland: Poems for A.M. Klein. Recent collections and anthologies he co-edited include Foreplay: An Anthology of Word Sonnets and the bilingual Pluriel: Une anthologie, des voix/An Anthology of Diverse Voices.
Five-time winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award, he is also the recipient of the J.I. Segal Prize and the ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) Poetry Translation Award for his renditions from the Yiddish. He also received the Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award given to an individual who has made significant contributions to Canadian Jewish Studies in one or more fields.
Alongside his creative writing career, Mayne has been teaching at the University of Ottawa since 1973 where he is Professor of Canadian Literature, Creative Writing, and Canadian Studies, and also directs the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program whose establishment he oversaw in 2006. He continues to serve as the Vered Program's coordinator and most ardent promoter. He also taught at the University of British Columbia, Concordia University in Montreal, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of La Laguna, Canary Islands, Spain.
Mayne has received numerous awards for his academic work, including The Capital Educators' Award (2003), an initiative of the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation awarded to educators who have made a difference in the lives of their students by acting as role models, instilling confidence and nurturing leadership; The Excellence in Education Prize (2005), and lastly he was named Professor of the Year in the Faculty of Arts (2010).
A longtime resident of Canada's capital, Ottawa, Mayne has helped sustain the city's literary and artistic community over the past three and a half decades. He has given hundreds of lectures and readings at universities and other institutions across Canada, the United States, and abroad. His dedication to learning and writing has also materialized in the promotion of creative writing within the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. He has supervised the publication of a series of more than twenty anthologies drawing on the work of student writers. In his years as an educator, Mayne has acted as a mentor to dozens of aspiring writers.
The term sonnet derives from the Italian word sonetto. It refers to a fixed verse poetic form, traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set rhyming scheme. Originating in 13th-century Sicily, the sonnet was in time taken up in many European-language areas, mainly to express romantic love at first, although eventually any subject was considered acceptable. Many formal variations were also introduced, including abandonment of the quatorzain limit – and even of rhyme altogether in modern times.
Barry Edward Dempster is a Canadian poet, novelist, and editor.
Robert Arthur Douglas Ford, was a Canadian poet, translator and diplomat.
Abraham Moses Klein was a Canadian poet, journalist, novelist, short story writer and lawyer. He has been called "one of Canada's greatest poets and a leading figure in Jewish-Canadian culture."
Yocheved Bat-Miriam was an Israeli poet. Bat-Miriam was Born in Belorussia to a Hasidic family. She studied pedagogy in Kharkov and at the universities of Odessa and Moscow. During this period, she participated in the revolutionary literary activities of the “Hebrew Octoberists”, a Communist literary group, and one of her earliest poem-cycles, a paean to revolutionary Russia entitled Erez (Land) was published in the group's anthology in 1926. She is unusual among Hebrew poets in expressing nostalgia for the landscapes of the country of her birth. Yocheved migrated to British Palestine, later to be called Israel, in 1928. Her first book of poetry, Merahok was published in 1929. In 1948, her son Nahum (Zuzik) Hazaz from the writer Haim Hazaz died in the 1947–1949 Palestine war. Since then she never wrote a poem again.
Meir Wieseltier was an Israeli poet and translator.
John Asfour was a Lebanese–Canadian poet, writer, and teacher. At the age of 13, a grenade exploded in his face, blinding him during the Lebanese crisis of 1958.
Zachariah Wells is a Canadian poet, critic, essayist and editor.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Paul Hoover is an American poet and editor born in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Sabine Huynh is a Vietnamese-born French writer, poet, translator, and literary critic.
Zechariah Choneh Bergner, better known by his pen name Melech Ravitch, was a Yiddish poet and essayist. Ravitch was one of the world's leading Yiddish literary figures both before and after the Holocaust. His poetry and essays appeared in the international Yiddish press and in anthologies, as well as in translation.
Kenneth Sherman is a Canadian poet and essayist. He has written ten books of poetry. His 2017 memoir, Wait Time, was nominated for the RBC Taylor Prize for non-fiction.