River with Obsolescent Buildings

“Downtown Problems, Patterns, & Influences," from A Market Analysis for Metropolitan Winnipeg by Reid, Crowther & Partners, 1967.

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Huzzah! My poem, "River with Obsolescent Buildings," was shortlisted for Arc's 2014 Poem-of-the-Year contest.

Which means that my poem was included in the Readers' Choice Award and available for download via's Arc's website, though without my name attached.

I didn't feel like coercing people to vote for me, to have to coyly parse out details of which poem was or was not mine.

So I didn't.

This is my third Arc shortlisting. I didn't win, place, or show the other two times. But I'm glad to be included again and, like always, I'll wait to see how the main contest - and the Readers' Choice thingy - shakes out.

(If you were also semi-secretly shortlisted or love a semi-secretly shortlisted poet, the winning poems will appear in the Summer 2014 issue...)

In the meantime, here's a map that poet Laura Lamont shared on Facebook one mid-winter afternoon. I wound up using some of the text in my poem - credited, of course - so I thought I'd share it too.

Check out the Manitoba Historical Maps Flickr group for lots of other intriguing maps.