Possible conflict of interest taints G-G poetry award

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Poet Di Brandt (BRANDON SUN ARCHIVES)

The anger has subsided. The bloggers have moved on to other topics. And the poets, after enjoying their brief moment in the sun, have returned to the task of chipping crystalline imagery from the granite of their souls.

It's too early to tell, however, if any lessons have been learned.

At the Governor General's Literary Awards Nov. 18, the $25,000 cheque for English-language poetry was given to Jacob Sheier, a Toronto poet living in New York, for his debut collection, More to Keep Us Warm.

Within 24 hours, eyebrows had been raised by Sheier's fellow poets on the CanLit website Bookninja.com.

Sheier's win, it seems, was tainted by apparent conflict of interest. In his book's acknowledgements, he had thanked by name two of the three jurors.

Manitoba's own Di Brandt had helped him with some translating and some editing, and Toronto's Pier Giorgia De Cicco had provided a blurb for the cover.

Even in the incestuous world of Canadian literature, this seemed a little close for comfort.

"It is a serious signal that something is deeply wrong with the process that this could happen," Bookninja's editor, the Newfoundland-based poet George Murray, wrote. "Is there no vetting of jurors? Is there no oversight of the process?"

Enough of a stink was made that the poets' complaints found their way into the mainstream press. A Toronto Star story quoted Melanie Rutledge, the head of the writing and publishing program of the Canada Council, which administer's the G-Gs.

"We stand behind the process," Rutledge said. "At the same time, if some in the poetry community believe that we should not have been satisfied with the committee's ability to be 100 per cent objective, then we must graciously and responsibly accept this feedback and continue to try to do the best we can."

Brandt, a former G-G winner herself, has been less conciliatory.

"We have a small poetry community in Canada, and knowing each other personally or having influenced or inspired each other cannot be considered a conflict of interest as such," she wrote to me in an e-mail, "because such influence and inspiration is ubiquitous."

Brandt, who teaches at Brandon University, was also eager to shoot the messenger.

"Why don't you read the book and talk about it instead of trying to proliferate a cheap and unworthy 'controversy'?" she asked.

Indeed, the Free Press poetry reviewer, Maurice Mierau, did read it. Last March he called More to Keep Us Warm "a promising debut" and noted Brandt's co-translation of a Rilke poem.

Still, Brandt's point here is well taken. Anyone who has served on an arts jury knows that a kind of peer pressure works to ensure that all members give it their best shot.

They also know, of course, that there is seldom unanimity in deciding a winner. Usually horse-trading is involved, and the top prize goes to the compromise nominee.

Hey, it worked for Stéphane Dion (for one election, at least), so what's the big deal?

Besides, the narrower the artistic discipline, the tougher it is to find jurists who have not had some dealings with the nominees.

This problem also infects the reviewing business, both in mainstream and academic press, and the grant-awarding institutions like the Canada Council and the Manitoba Arts Council. With the the G-Gs, no doubt these same issues apply to the drama and translation prizes.

It is tough to know what to do. Abandoning expert juries and going with some wider voting system, involving teachers, publishers and editors, could turn literary awards into an exercise in self-congratulation like, say, the Oscars.

But in this case, you have to side with the G-G critics. In a country with thousands of poets who labour in obscurity for decades, the poetry winner was a first-time author with public ties to two of the jurors.

Somebody should have seen this one coming.

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 29, 2008 C11