**** HRM Media Release
Sue Goyette named new Halifax Regional Municipality Poet Laureate
The Halifax Regional Municipality is pleased to announce that Sue Goyette will become the municipality’s eighth Poet Laureate.
The Poet Laureate serves as an ambassador and advocate for literacy, literature and the arts, and reflects the vitality of our community through appearances and readings of poetry at a number of civic events and other activities. Sue will serve a three-year term.
“We are pleased to appoint Sue Goyette as our next Poet Laureate. This proud municipal tradition which relies on the written and spoken word to articulate the joys and struggles of our shared community takes on new significance in these unprecedented times,” said Mayor Savage.
Sue has published six books of poems and a novel. Her forthcoming collection in 2020 is called Anthesis (Gaspereau Press, 2020).
Her accomplishments in poetry have been acknowledged through a number of awards, including the CBC Literary Prize for Poetry, the Earle Birney, the Bliss Carman, the Pat Lowther, the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award, the Relit Award, and the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award for her collection, Ocean. She’s also been nominated for several awards including the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Award.
She edited the 2014 Best of Canadian Poetry Anthology and the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology.
Sue currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Dalhousie University.
“I think poetry is vital to these times we find ourselves in for how it engages and connects us and for how it invites a wider way of knowing and being. I am grateful that the municipality is continuing to support poetry’s vital role in community, and I am honoured and ready to promote it,” said Sue Goyette.
Sue will officially assume the position of Poet Laureate tomorrow, April 29. We kindly thank Dr. Afua Cooper for her contributions as the 2018-20 Poet Laureate.
For more information on the municipal Poet Laureate program and previous Poet Laureate’s, visit http://www.halifax.ca/recreation/arts-culture-heritage/poet-laureate.
