Récompenses

Governor General's Literary Awards (Poetry) 2007

Vainqueur

Description

A poet of osmosis explores the implicit relationship between matter and spirit, the interconnectedness of the universe.

In his first full-length collection since 1998's Parish of the Physic Moon, Don Domanski writes with clarity of vision. He is a poet of the holiness of subtleties, a master of mindfulness and being. His writing is a form of osmosis, spirit seeping through the details of each poem, creating a marvel of metaphysics and language distilled to purest energy. Living in the moment here is synonymous with being the moment, a transformation that is stunning to inhabit.

The Star Bellatrix

the bride turns in a trance
red flowers fall out of her hands
endlessly into black space

her desire is a hesitance

her body warm as if she were dancing
spinning on a floor her partner unbeheld.

Intensely moving, these fluid poems open up our perceptions of what it means to be alive in a sentient universe.

Poetry renews itself with each generation, but there is a source of poetry older than all the languages. Don Domanski writes close to this source, where autobiography is necessarily transpersonal, and the variegated finery of existent things is both secular home and sacred text. Each of his books, but especially this book, is a mirror for the inexhaustible. - Roo Borson

Each poem, beautiful, bewitching, unfolds with crystalline clarity and with a music that is both lush and subtle. Don Domanski's poems are intimate, but intimate on a grand scale. As far as I am concerned, there is no better poet writing in English. - Mark Strand

Don Domanski was born and raised on Cape Breton Island and now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has published eight books of poetry. Two of his books (Wolf Ladder, 1991, and Stations of the Left Hand, 1994) were short-listed for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. In 1999 he won the Canadian Literary Award for Poetry. Published and reviewed internationally, his work has been translated into Czechoslovakian, Portuguese, and Spanish.