The League of Canadian Poets declared April 21 as AL PURDY DAY to recognize his legacy.
Published under her pseudonym A. Garnett Weiss, JC’s collection of centos, BRICOLAGE:A GATHERING OF CENTOS, features “Where love was slowly becoming possible,” based on Al’s poems. For the Art of Conversation joint project of the County Arts Council and the Community Care Association for Seniors JC created a second Purdy-linked cento after a number of conversations she had with a wise and independent 99 year-old woman who was born in Prince Edward County.
“I am a screen through which the world passes” draws non-contiguous lines and its title, unaltered apart from changes in punctuation, from Purdy’s long poem, In Search of Owen Roblin.
To honour AL PURDY DAY, here is the cento:
I am a screen through which the world passes
To belong somewhere torn
from the great pine forests,
so far from anywhere.
Leaning back against the tree trunks, sitting
on a stone where water foams out,
I realized that here was the exact spot
above the watery rumble.
A long misty chain stretched thru time, and I
began to read books about the 19thcentury.
But names and dates say little.
But the only thing certain is the settlers, themselves.
And I can hear them,
in the past shouting questions and hearing echoes, movings
and reachings and fragments.
For the book is not closed,
as we, too, have our shadowy children deep
down beyond the morning light and under
the high green ceiling of the forest.
Wind and Water 2023 Contest awards first place to JC writing as A. Garnett Weiss
JC thanked the judges and convenors of the Prince Edward County Arts Council’s Annual Wind and Water Writing Contest for selecting her cento as the winning poetry entry.
The cento “For our many moods, there is nothing like a lantern” uses lines drawn unaltered apart for reasons of punctuation from individual poems by 9 different poets in The Next Wave, An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry, Jim Johnstone, Editor, Palimpsest Press, 2018.
Here’s what the judges had to say about the poem: “This cento captured this year’s them in both form and content, offering a moving depiction of the poetic ties that connect one person to another.”
This year’s contest attracted the highest number of entries since the contest was established by the Arts Council in 2019. JC’s cento won the inaugural contest that year.
JC saluted each of the writers and poets who shared their fine work this way. Here’s a link to reading the winning entries and honourable mentions: https://countyarts.ca/wind-water-writing-contest/
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