Artist: Sue Sinclair (Toronto)

Date: January 20, 2009

Poet Sue Sinclar read from her recent collection Breaker at Open Space. Following the reading, Sinclair was interviewed by Victoria poet Steven Price. Sinclair additionally read at the University of Victoria.

Sue Sinclair has been described as the direct inheritor of the great early 20th century German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: she possesses intense lyrical vision, steeped in wonder at the existence of the world, and a kind of grief at our inability to lose ourselves in it completely. Her perception is acutely focused and rigorous; and she is acutely self-aware. She is not afraid of words like "beauty" or "being," yet, because of the intensity of her vision, she never uses them as clichés.

Sue Sinclair has written three previous books of poetry, Secrets of Weather & Hope, Mortal Arguments, and The Drunken Lovely Bird. Her work has been nominated for awards including the Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Awards and the Atlantic Book Prize for Poetry. Secrets of Weather & Hope was a Globe 100 title. Sinclair studies philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Open Word: Readings and Ideas was organized in partnership with the Writing Department at the University of Victoria and sponsored by The Canada Council for the Arts.