Maggie Burton has won the C$10,000 (about US$7,330) Canadian First Book Prize, awarded annually by the Griffin Poetry Prize, for her debut collection Chores. The prize also includes a six-week residency in Italy in partnership with the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Burton will be invited to read from her book at this year's Griffin Poetry Prize readings on June 5 in Toronto.
The judges called Chores "charming and profound, traditional and inventive. Its combination of qualities seems effortless but is not only the innate fruit of a vision but the result of skillful poetic design. The book’s detailed, intimate awareness beautifully evokes Newfoundland and expands to our worldwide cultural moment. Burton applies a critique of how we live while embracing life with tenderness and humor. For all the fate, traditional limitation, labor, bitter recognition that chores contain, perhaps the deepest desire of Chores is to fulfill its glimpses of hope beyond mere acceptance: 'the old harbour was chock solid with seals/ and harpoons and I now believe/ with all my heart the stirring is true…' "