25 November 2004
Carmine Starnino Wins
A.M. Klein Prize

In an awards ceremony held at the Lion d’Or in Montreal last night, the Quebec Writers’ Federation declared the winners of its annual writing prizes. Gaspereau Press is delighted to announce that Carmine Starnino was named winner of the federation’s A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry for his collection With English Subtitles. Also nominated were Robyn Sarah (A Day’s Grace: Poems 1997–2002) and David Solway (Franklin’s Passage). The prize was established in memory of Sydney Weisbord and is granted each year to an English-language poet residing in the province of Quebec. For more information, please visit the federation’s website at www.qwf.org.

With English Subtitles is Carmine Starnino at his most inventive. The poems in this collection are exceptionally focused, musical and inviting. Household objects, Italian relatives, Yukon landscapes, worst-case scenarios and relationships are pushed onto the page with new-found urgency and delight. Coupled with this energy is a focus on the process of decay and the beauty contained therein. Junkyard, charity auction, failed relationship and autumn all center on the varied and tenuous aesthetic of rust.

Carmine Starnino is a poet, essayist, critic, editor of Signal Editions (an imprint of Véhicule Press), and associate editor at Maisonneuve magazine. His first poetry collection, The New World, was nominated for the 1997 QSPELL A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His second collection, Credo, won the 2001 Canadian Authors Association Prize for Poetry and the 2001 David McKeen Award for Poetry. Starnino lives in Montreal. His new book, Lover’s Quarrel, on criticism of Canadian poetry will also be released this year.

Gaspereau Press is a literary publisher and printer based in Kentville, Nova Scotia. The press was established in 1997 by Gary Dunfield and Andrew Steeves, and is one of the few publishers in Canada that operates a full-scale print shop. The press is committed to literature and the book arts, incorporating a range of modern and antique forms of printing and binding to create books that are distinctive in manufacture and design.

For more information contact Beth Crosby
47 Church Avenue, Kentville, NS, B4N 2M7
902-678-6002, info@gaspereau.com