Poet Marilyn Dumont will read from her award-winning work at UWinnipeg this Thursday March 22, 2018 at 4:00 pm in room 1L11 (Lockhart Hall) in honour of World Poetry Day. Dumomt will be introduced by fellow poet and Winnipeg’s Inaugural Poet Laureate Di Brandt.
Dumont’s four collections of poetry have all won awards, provincially and nationally. A Really Good Brown Girl (Brick Books) is in its 15th printing. Dumont has been writer-in-residence at five universities (Alberta, Windsor, Toronto-Massey College, Brandon, MacEwan) and at the Edmonton Public Library. She has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from University of British Columbia and is currently an associate professor in English/Film Studies and the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.
Di Brandt is an internationally renowned poet, author, artistic collaborator, and literary critic who has received numerous prizes and recognitions for her work, including the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award; the CAA National Poetry Prize; the international Foreword Gold Medal for Fiction, and the Gabrielle Roy Prize for “best book of literary criticism in Canada,” with Barbara Godard. Di Brandt is Winnipeg’s inaugural Poet Laureate.
World Poetry Day was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. Its purpose is to promote the reading, writing, publishing, and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the original UNESCO declaration says, to “give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements.” Poetry reaffirms our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, everywhere in the world, share the same questions and feelings. Poetry is the mainstay of oral tradition and, over centuries, can communicate the innermost values of diverse cultures.
