The StFX English Department is pleased to host Annick MacAskill, who will read from her award-winning poetry on October 12 at 4 p.m. in Mulroney Hall 2034.
Dr. MacAskill, who teaches French language, literature, and translation in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, NS, is the 2022 recipient of the Governor General’s Award for poetry. In addition to her work having appeared in numerous Canadian and international literary journals, she is the author of three full-length collections, including Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022).
Shadow Blight considers the pain and isolation of pregnancy loss through the lens of classical myth. Drawing on the stories of Niobe–whose monumental suffering at the loss of her children literally turned her to stone–and others, this collection explores the experience of being swept away by grief and silenced by the world. Skirting the tropes (“o how beautiful / the poets make our catastrophes”), Dr. MacAskill interweaves the ancient with the contemporary in a way that opens possibilities and offers a new language for those “shut up in stillness.”
Dr. MacAskill recently served as Poet-in-Residence with Arc Poetry Magazine and has taught creative writing through the League of Canadian Poets’ P.K. Page Mentorship Programme, the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia’s Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Programme, and others. In 2024, she will teach creative writing at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Dr. MacAskill has been a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize, Arc‘s Poem of the Year Contest, The Fiddlehead‘s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, Grain Magazine‘s Short Grain Contest, The New Quarterly‘s Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, among other literary honours. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and abroad, including The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, and Best Canadian Poetry 2019. In addition to her poetry, she has published articles on Renaissance French and Neo-Latin poetry in journals such as the International Journal of the Classical Tradition, L’Année ronsardienne, Le Verger, and Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme.
This event, organizers say, will be of particular interest to students and faculty in English, Women’s and Gender Studies, Modern Languages, and to persons of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
For more on Dr. MacAskill, please visit https://annickmacaskill.com/
