Free Press columnist, city’s poet laureate honoured with Governor General’s Literary awards

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This article was published 13/11/2024 (306 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What began as columns penned for the Free Press on the complexities of Winnipeg —its good, bad and in-between — has led to Niigaan Sinclair winning the Governor-General’s Literary Awards prize for non-fiction writing.

Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre, published in May by McClelland & Stewart, was lauded as a “necessary and important book.”

“Niigaan Sinclair accomplishes the near impossible by creating a compelling and nuanced whole out of a series of newspaper columns,” the Canada Council for the Arts said in announcing the prize Wednesday. “Wînipêk unearths histories of colonial violence, grounded in the wisdom and experiences of those who survived and survive it.”

City of Winnipeg poet laureate Chimwemwe Undi, meanwhile, took the top poetry prize for her collection Scientific Marvel, published in April by House of Anansi. Undi’s collection reflects on experiences in Winnipeg through the lenses of race, gender, immigration and queerness, as well as the reality of life in Winnipeg and what might be left out of the stories told about the city.

Sinclair was able to share the news of his Governor General’s Literary Award win with his father, Sen. Murray Sinclair, before he died on Nov. 4.

“I was with my dad when I found out that I won,” Sinclair recalls. “We celebrated that morning — Dad gave me a hug. There are very few times in my life that my dad and I have been able to celebrate together, because he travelled so much, but we got to celebrate in that moment when I won.”

Undi was in her office when she got the news. “I had to suppress my reaction a little bit because it was confidential, but yeah, I’m just thrilled. It’s incredible,” she says. “It’s a dream come true.”

Winners of the Governor General’s Literary Awards each receive $25,000; their publisher takes home $3,000. For a complete list of winners and finalists see ggbooks.ca.

While both authors write about the place they live, they can see the ways the themes of their books resonate beyond the city’s borders.

“I think people have woken up to the fact that what’s happening in Wînipêk, which is not not the city or the province, it’s actually the watershed — Northwestern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin — is this really remarkable change,” Sinclair says.

“How do we deal effectively with Indigenous communities? How do we work effectively together? How do we begin to learn and engage in this country, which has always been undergirded by a foundation of Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy? They just aren’t having that conversation as much in Montreal, Toronto or Ottawa … they can learn a lot from Winnipeg.”

Similarly, Undi sees the city as a microcosm for wider, more universal themes.

“I think a lot of the kinds of tensions that are faced by Canada, and by Turtle Island more generally, really come to a head in the city — issues of race and of policing and of poverty and the divisions between people that we’re experiencing, and also all of the great things about the world,” Undi says.

“Being poet laureate for the last two years, I’ve really had remarkable insight into what a beautiful community Winnipeg is, how loving the people here are, and how dedicated they are to the city and to their neighbours. For me there’s something really fascinating and really fruitful about the kind of gap between the hopes and potential of the city and the reality that we’re all experiencing.”

Sinclair credits the work done by editors at both McClelland & Stewart and the Free Press, as well as the newspapers’s photographers, for helping shape Wînipêk.

“It was a group effort — all these amazing editors, the amazing people that have edited me over the years,” he says. “Because it wasn’t just me that did this, it was the editors, and then of course, the photographers … I want them to know that they’re appreciated and recognized, and they are just amazing.”

Winnipeg poets have a strong track record of winning the Governor General’s Literary Award in recent years. Hannah Green won last year for Xanax Cowboy, also published by House of Anansi, while katherena vermette took the top award in 2013 for her collection North End Love Songs.

“The editor at House of Anansi, Kevin Connolly, has described Winnipeg as having a relationship with poetry that’s pretty unique in Canada at the moment,” Undi says. “I can say for myself that writing in Winnipeg has meant I’ve been influenced by writers from all over Canada and Turtle Island, but I’ve also had the benefit of being influenced by other kinds of artists in Winnipeg.”

Undi sees parallels between the award-winning collections she and Sinclair have produced. “I think there’s sort of a shared understanding that the story we’ve been telling ourselves about the city is one that we really do need to examine and unpack, and that there are things that we are we need to talk about that we haven’t been talking about,” she says.

“And it seems like maybe now’s the time for that conversation.”

books@freepress.mb.ca

@bensigurdson