Meira Cook
Méira Cook will be our Carol Shields Writer in Residence for 2018.
Méira Cook was born in Johannesburg and worked as a journalist in South Africa. Since coming to Canada, she has published five books of poetry, two collections of essays, and two novels, with a third novel forthcoming in October 2017. She holds a PhD in Canadian literature from the University of Manitoba.
She has won the CBC Literary Award for poetry, the Walrus Prize for poetry, and the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award.
Méira will be with us for four weeks in Winter term (two weeks either side of Mid-Term Break: the weeks of Feb. 5, Feb. 12, Feb. 26, and March 5).
Everyone is invited to welcome Méira at her inaugural reading on Wednesday January 31, at 12:30 in room 2M70 (second floor of Manitoba Hall). Coffee, tea and cookies will be served.
On Thursday February 15th at 7:00 p.m. please join us in room 2M70 for Méira Cook’s presentation of the Carol Shields Distinguished Lecture for 2018: "Fin in the Water: An Only Slightly Dangerous Glimpse Beneath the Surface." Refreshments will be served, cash bar.
In January, we will post an email address for Méira: her consultations are free and open to the public. Everyone is invited to contact her by email as of January 31st.
Books by Méira Cook:
Poetry: A Fine Grammar of Bones, Toward a Catalogue of Falling, Slovenly Love, A Walker in the City, and Monologue Dogs.
Novels: The House on Sugarbush Road, Nightwatching, and Once More with Feeling (Fall 2017, Anansi Press).
Essays: Writing Lovers: Reading Canadian Love Poetry by Women, and Field Marks: The Poetry of Don McKay.
Here is what Catherine Hunter writes about Méira Cook’s collection of poetry, Monologue Dogs:
Readers, if you have not yet ventured beyond the double-dog dare of this book’s cover, I bid you, enter. It’s like a tour through a dream-like library that threads itself through the gaps in your own reading history. All of the poems are excellent and most are brilliant—and no poetry reader should risk missing out on what is one of the best poems ever, and I mean ever: “Five Act Iscariot,” a heart-breaking, mind-expanding, gospel-defying exploration of love, executed in flawless, and beautifully subtle, sonnet form. I can’t talk about it right now, but read it. Read the whole book and see how many echoes and half-echoes sound through your head and heart. Enjoy.
(Catherine Hunter’s appreciation of Méira Cook’s Monologue Dogs is on the Brick Books website: Celebration of Canadian Poetry, August 26, 2016.)