JC delighted in announcing the winning poems and identifying the poets who entered the winners’ circle at the 21st Awesome Authors Awards ceremony on March 29 at Centrepoint Theatre, Ottawa.
Then she shared her decision to step down as English poetry judge after more than a decade of serving in this capacity, for which the Ottawa Public Library (OPL) awarded her the Order of Friendship in 2010.
“I love the contest and will remain its biggest fan,” she promised.
She asked everyone who had submitted a poem to the contest in English or French or English and French to raise their hands and declared it awesome that so many emerging writers aged 9-17 had the courage to do so.
In the autumn, winning poems and short stories will be published in the anthology, Pot Pourri. Copies can be ordered directly from The Friends of the Ottawa Public Library.
To honour the poets who won awards this year, JC has created a cento (pronounced ‘sento’), a form of poetry, which uses lines or parts of lines written by different poets and combines them into a poem, which is new in form and meaning. JC (often writing as A. Garnett Weiss) is focusing now on this form, and a number of her centos have been published and won awards.
Ask me anything you want takes lines or parts of lines, unaltered from how they appeared in the winning poems in this year’s Awesome Authors Contest. The gloss links to the source of each line, including the title of the poem and the poet’s name.
Ask me anything you want
Drunk on madness and intoxicating fun,
head spinning, feeling awfully faint,
I wish for you in my dreams,
wishes long forgotten
where all birds sing as if it were the same song
if only they could be heard.
I have too many names, I can’t even count them,
and, having no one to turn to for love,
to withstand any enemy
my candles and matches do nothing to fight against,
something blocks all open gates,
moving with sudden purpose
a mixture of your blood with the waters.
However no one can know except for you and me.
Wherever you go, whomever you meet,
no one understands who we are.
Cento gloss: Ask me anything you want
Title: Alyson Moncur-Beer, “Girl Power”
Line 1: Shannon Noah, “Awakened”
Line 2: Irine Stripinis, “Fall from Grace”
Line 3: Maariya Toman, “Breathless”
Line 4: Julia Dolansyky-Overland, “Lost”
Line 5: Owen McKibbon, “What’s Around You and Living in Love”
Line 6: Mitra Dadjoo, “Summer”
Line 7: Francine Stripinis, “Eternally Cursed”
Line 8: Kara Cybanski, “The Mistake of Solitude”
Line 9: Lucy Boyd, “Lily flies”
Line 10: Belinda Xu, “Pins and Needles”
Line 11: Maleeka Ellaithy, “Hand in Hand”
Line 12: Lily Inskip-Shesnicky, “Solo”
Line 13: Sara Rwentambo, “Creativity”
Line 14: Leah Sullivan, “The Seamstress”
Line 15: Shannon Creelman, “Fly like a bird”
Line 16: Zara Hewson, “Powerless or Powerful”
