Alison Dyer's Blog

I'm a little late in announcing that I'd Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game has won the 2019 Newfoundland & Labrador Book Award for Poetry (E.J. Pratt Poetry Award)!! Fabulous news. Here's what the jury (Mark Callanan, Patrick Warner, Greg Pike) said of my book:

“The poems in Alison Dyer’s I’d Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game are steeped in realism, particularly in the Newfoundland environment, its landscapes, streetscapes, rocks, flora and chickens…Dyer’s imagination engages nature not to dominate but to fuse perception with language, which she does admirably, page after page, often in miniature, and with surprising and affecting metaphors (as in the title poem). Her confident lines are textured and musical: “Knuckles of quartz punched out of bruised purple sandstone/ sea blue with scratch marks from wind and current, /and twinkling pools like barrels of marbles spilt” (Tattoos of Signal Hill). These poems are a love song to place and are to be savoured.”

Thank you jury. And readers

Lovely words heard last night, at the Atlantic Book Awards Gala in Halifax, from the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award jury about my shortlisted book:
"Alison Dyer’s keen observations become rapturous in her tributes to the world around her in I’d Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game. She writes like an ecstatic mystic, her lack of ego as refreshing as her humour. It is difficult to write poems that have such surprising images, employ clear simple language, yet go so deep. Dyer has accomplished this and more. "

Looking for a poetry collection to read for Earth Day (or week)? Canadian author and historian Ryan O'Connor says this about I'd Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game:
"As a tribute to the environment and people of Newfoundland, this poetry collection makes for an excellent read. If you’re like me, you’ll appreciate it even more with subsequent re-readings." (Atlantic Books Today, Aug.2017)

A thoughtful article and interview by Chris Lewis in today's The Compass newspaper.

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author photo credit: Megan Tanner. Taken 2016 - awaiting helicopter rescue on the Churchill River, Labrador!

I'm pleased to be the featured poet today, on All Lit Up Canada's blog, in celebration of National Poetry Month: Poetry Cure. Check link below for my interview with ALU, and my poem White Birch (moonchild)I'd Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game: https://alllitup.ca/Blog/2018/Poetry-...

I'm honoured to be a finalist for the J.M. Abraham Poetry Prize.

See full press release from the Atlantic Book Awards and Festival here:
http://atlanticbookawards.ca/

For National Poetry Month, I've been invited to read at the A.C. Hunter Library (for those of you in and around St. John's, NL), on April 18th. Thank you League of Canadian Poets for funding this event!

Looking for new ways to express yourself? To experiment with other media? Consider creating a video poem. You can use either a single image that visually embodies your poem; a series of images; or a video. Play, experiment! I`ve posted four of my video poems (from my book ~I`d Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game) - and will have a fifth posted within a week or so. Enjoy! Be inspired. Let me know what you think.