Memorial University professor of creative writing Mary Dalton has been named poet laureate of the City of St. John’s.
“I’m delighted to be able to act as a kind of nexus for poetry in the city during my time as poet laureate,” said Prof. Dalton.
“For decades through my own writing, my teaching at the university and my various forms of engagement with poets and poetry in the wider community, I’ve been striving to call attention to the cultural and social power of the genre, as well as its great aesthetic pleasure — the pleasure of word play, word music. I look forward now to maintaining those preoccupations with a focus on St. John’s.”
The founder of the SPARKS Literary Festival, Prof. Dalton has published several books of poetry, including the collection Merrybegot (2003) which received the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Winterset Award.
Her most recent publications include the 2017 letterpress chapbook Waste Ground and Hooking: A Book of Centos.
