Winner of the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award
Creator: Sue Goyette (poet)
Nominator: Stephanie Domet
The poems in this collection are numbered, not titled, from 1 through 56. These designations accommodate the ebb and flow of the contents. A previous commentator remarked, “In Ocean, Goyette’s vigorous language and large vision create an extraordinary new history of the way the sea has formed human consciousness, shoreline experience and poetry itself.”
Jury Comments: How daring to take the ocean as a principal character—yet the characterization of the ocean is endlessly diverse! The original use of non-rhyming couplets is impressive, as is their repetitive, wave-like arrangement on the page. The richly varied levels of accessibility add to the poems’ appeal.
Ocean is published by Gaspereau Press. It is in its fifth printing.
Creator Sue Goyette lives in Halifax.
