Madeira Park author John Pass is a finalist for the 2006 Governor General's Literary Awards.
Pass's book of poetry Stumbling in the Bloom was nominated for the awards by his publisher, Oolichan Books.
Canada Council for the Arts announced the finalists last week in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children's literature (text and illustration) and translation.
A total of 68 books have been nominated for this year's awards; 36 of the short-listed writers and illustrators are finalists for the first time. That can't be said for Pass, as he was nominated in 2001 for his book of poetry Water Stair.
Pass said he found out about the honour in a real "Canadian way."
"I was driving to work in Sechelt and I heard the announcement on CBC Radio. It doesn't get more Canadian than that," Pass recalled. "I was delighted to hear my name. There were 123 entries submitted, so to be in the top in my category is a rare honour."
The poems in Stumbling in the Bloom, published last year, engage the ever-present enticements and entanglements of beauty on life's and art's home ground - in wilderness and garden. But this surprising volume, the finale of Pass' quartet of poetry books, At Large, takes intriguing side trips on the home-stretch, including a wry excursion to the chiropractor, a fanciful flight from a student driver's parallel parking practice and on a singularly moving Canadian journey towards and away from the Ground Zero of the 9/11 tragedy. The book and Pass' aesthetic come to rest finally on a fulcrum, a paradox, of acceptance: the embrace of uncertainty and unhappy accident that purpose and effort alone make possible.
Pass was born in 1947 in Sheffield, England and has lived in Canada since 1953. He has a BA in English from UBC (1969) and teaches at Capilano College in Sechelt and North Vancouver. Fourteen books and chapbooks of his work have been published and his poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada and abroad.
In 1988 he won the Canada Poetry Prize and has won awards from the League of Canadian Poets, B.C. Federation of Writers and B.C. Cultural Services. Pass was the recipient in 2001 of the Gillian Lowndes Award. His previous books, The Hour's Acropolis and Water Stair, were short listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
The winners will be announced on Tuesday, Nov. 21, at 10 a.m. at simultaneous news conferences in Toronto and Montreal."This is an amazing community. Over the years they have provided me with a lot of support," Pass said.
Everyone is invited to cheer on the book at the Arts Centre in Sechelt on Friday, Nov. 10, at 8 p.m.
There will be a reading, refreshments and a book-signing with free admission courtesy of Oolichan Books.
