The Archibald Lampman Award recognizes an outstanding book of English-language poetry by an author living in the National Capital Region.
The jury for the 2008 award were Harold Rhenisch, Alison Pick, and Michael deBeyer.
2008 Winner
“The Bindery” by Shane Rhodes
Judge Harold Rhenisch calls the books a “masterful series of inventions that reads like a whole library of broadsides and chapbooks, as Rhodes takes a great range of contemporary uses of language and experiments with their interface with the lyrical tradition. The language has an exceptional balance of freedom and control, and the poems ring with a resonant and generous voice.”
Judge Alison Pick comments that “There is a remarkable intelligence at work in The Bindery, and an uncanny facility with language: the ability to both pin down and to transport, often in the same poem, the same line. This kind of poetic exuberance married with such formal control is uncommon indeed. The Bindery is a wonderful achievement.
Arc’s third Judge Michael deBeyer writes of The Bindery: “If poetry should include rhythm, structure, imagery, metaphor, narrative, and a bevy of poetic devices (alliteration, assonance, synecdoche, etc.), as well as some lift, some romance or extra-philosophical rendering, some reason d’etre, and risk, then The Bindery has it all. The Bindery coheres in the metaphorical riffs between artifacts, uniting them as a whole, like a journal coheres a life. And I would say there is something chronological about the way the book is formed; each section, by subject matter, seems to identify a specific place and time.” [2008 Judges]
Shane Rhodes is the author of six books of poetry, including Dead White Men (2017, Coach House Books). Other notable titles include Err, which was nominated for the City of Ottawa Book Award, X, which created poetry out of Canada’s post-Confederation treaties, and The Wireless Room, which won the Alberta Book Award.
Arc is grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Ottawa, as well as many individual supporters. For further information contact Arc Poetry Magazine at managingeditor@arcpoetry.ca.