I was pleased to learn in late August that a suite of my poems was one of five finalists for ELQ/Exile Literary Quarterly’s annual Gwendolyn MacEwan Poetry Prize. My entry, titled “Papyrus Requiem” consisted of a series of elegies for my long-time close friend and fellow writer, the California poet Dennis Saleh, who died in November 2020.

Winner this year was Yvonne Blomer, the fourth Victoria BC poet laureate, 2015-2018.

I had won the Prize in 2015 with a long poem on some aspects of the Grail myth, “The Question.” The following year my entry was shortlisted in the competition’s Best Poem category.