Poerty

Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry

To mark the 10th anniversary of the prize that bears his name, Scott Griffin wanted to make a statement. To that end, the chairman and the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry decided to double the amount of the Griffin Poetry Prize, from $100,000 to $200,000.

"We weren't trying to necessarily make it bigger than anything else, but to make a statement: that this is important, that poetry is important," Griffin said Tuesday, after the nominees for the 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize were announced at a news conference in downtown Toronto.

Each of this year's seven finalists receives $10,000, while the two winners will receive an additional $65,000, bringing their total to $75,000.

In a reverse from last year, where eventual international category winner C.D. Wright was the lone female poet to be nominated, women dominated this year's shortlist, six to one.
P.K. Page, who died earlier this year at age 93, is on this year's shortlist of Canadian works for Coal and Roses, alongside Kate Hall for The Certainty Dream and Karen Solie for Pigeon.
The international shortlisted works are: Grain by John Glenday, A Village Life by Louise Gluck, The Sun-fish by Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Cold Spring in Winter by Valerie Rouzeau.
Last year's winners were A.F. Moritz of Toronto and Wright, who hails from Providence, R.I.
The judges for the Griffin, poets Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie and Carl Phillips, read some 400 books of poetry to come up with the shortlist.
The 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist readings will take place June 2 in Toronto. The winners will be announced June 3.

CANUCKS UP FOR HUGO PRIZE

Two Canadians have been named finalists for the Hugo Award, the world's top prize for science-fiction writing.Robert J. Sawyer, based in Mississauga, was nominated for best novel for his book Wake, a story about a 15-year-old girl who discovers an emerging artificial intelligence lurking on the Internet.
The novel is the first book of what will become the WWW trilogy.
California-born Robert Charles Wilson, who recently became a Canadian citizen, was nominated in the same category for Julian Comstock, A Novel of 22nd Century America, premised on a future United States ruled by a Christian fundamentalist oligarchy.

Imagine You are Driving

Imagine you are driving

nowhere, with no one beside you;

with the empty road unraveling and raveling

in sympathy as the wheel turns in your hands.

On either side the wheatfields go shimmering

past in an absence of birdsong, and the sky

decants the shadows of the weather from itself.

So you drive on, hopeful of a time

when the ocean will rise up before you like dusk

and you will make landfall at last –

some ancient, long-forgotten mooring,

which both of you, of course, will recognize;

though as I said before, there is no one beside you

and neither of you has anywhere to go.

From Grain, by John Glenday
Copyright © John Glenday 2009

Myths

Gaelic Myths/Legends

There are several legends recounting the ownership of the Brugh, all of which involve similar ambiguity and complexity concerning day and night and the passage of time. It would seem then, that the myths relating to Newgrange dramatise a basic idea, which is interesting when one considers the solar alignment and the possible pre-historic usage of Newgrange as a megalithic calendar.

The old tales tell how the gates of the world stand open at this time. Journeys to the "other world", either metaphorically or otherwise, may well be transformative. It is for this reason that Samhain can be seen as a time when the past and future are available to the present. It is a time to see ourselves as part of the web of past and future. We are not isolated in time.

Many of the more curious and supernatural events in Irish mythology are associated with Samhain, including two of the legends associated with Newgrange and Aonghus.

The term mythology can refer to either the study of myths or a body of myths. The main characters in myths are usually gods or supernatural heroes.Some thinkers believe that myths resulted from the personification of inanimate objects and forces. According to these thinkers, the ancients worshipped natural phenomena such as fire and air, gradually coming to describe them as gods.
 

Social Network

Social Network Sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.

Legends

Myths

Pop culture music

Rap music is the latest African American cultural commodity to titillate white audiences. Not only has this music become increasingly popular among white Americans, but its characteristics have infiltrated numerous aspects of mainstream white culture including its fashion, movies, and vocabulary. Most striking is the embrace of this traditionally black cultural item by young, white males. 

Throughout this study, all of my informants implied that an overtly masculine culture surrounds rap music. According to their responses, barring a few minor exceptions, such as L'il Kim, Foxxy Brown and Mary J. Blige, females are virtually non-existent in this culture as performers or purveyors of rap music, although they are often the subject of rap songs. My informants' responses also belied their adherence to traditional stereotypes about masculinity and femininity, i.e. that men act and women are acted upon.

Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia to Eliza (1886–1924) and John Randall Pleasant I (1881–1969). Henrietta “Pleasant” Lacks married her first cousin David Lacks I (1915–2002) in Halifax County, Virginia. Henrietta Lacks convinced David to go north to search for work and later followed bringing their children with her. David found work at the Sparrow's Point shipyards and found a house for them on New Pittsburgh Avenue in Turners Station. Henrietta Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital with a worrisome symptom which was spotting on her underwear. She was quickly diagnosed with cervical cancer. Eight months later, despite surgery and radiation treatment, the Sparrows Point shipyard worker's wife died at age 31 as she lay in the hospital's segregated ward for blacks.

            After Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 from having cervical cancer  left behind her tumor cells. The cells, dubbed "HeLa" for Henrietta Lacks, multiplied as no other cells outside the human body had before, doubling their numbers daily. In the 50 years after Henrietta Lacks' death, her tumor cells combined mass is probably much larger than Lacks was when she was alive and have continually been used for research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping, and countless other scientific pursuits. On the day of Henrietta's death, the head of Hopkins' tissue-culture research lab, Dr. George Gey, went before TV cameras, held up a tube of HeLa cells, and announced that a new age of medical research had begun--one that, someday, could produce a cure for cancer

            If I was one of Henrietta Lacks’ relatives it will be a little disturbing knowing that her tumor cells are all around the world. I would be happy that they are using something that she no longer use to help find a cure for cancer. Since the doctors such as Dr. Jonas Salk can see how fast the cells are duplicating maybe they can find a way to slow that process down. If I didn’t know that Henrietta Lacks organs was still alive I would be very fuming because that is part of her so those are also her remains. By Henrietta Lacks organs still being alive that also means that part of her is still alive.