Poet Jack Hannan’s nomination for a Quebec Writers' Federation first-book award was rescinded, but he isn’t complaining
Photograph by: John Kenney, The Gazette
"Something could be verbed out in a number of ways ..."
A Poem for the Coming Surface, Jack Hannan
MONTREAL - Early prodigy, late bloomer – in his unassuming way, Montreal writer Jack Hannan has been both. His recognition, however, has been blemished by a bit of controversy he didn’t seek.
This is how the story’s arc has gone so far.
In primary school Hannan wrote his first poem, in his early 30s he got published, for 20 years he stopped writing, and now in his early 60s he has come back with a new collection of poetry – and a novel, as yet unpublished.
The poetry collection, Some Frames, got Hannan nominated for two prizes at the upcoming Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards. Unfortunately, it was then un-nominated for one, the Concordia University First Book Prize.
The reason? Some Frames, it turned out, wasn’t Hannan’s first book. He had already published a small collection of poetry in 1978. And therein lies the problem.
Granted, his first book, Peeling Oranges in the Shade, was a modest affair: only about 50 pages long, only 300 copies printed. Hannan considers it a chapbook, a short and limited-edition work.
But it did have an ISBN number – the official seal of a bona fide book.
It was trade-book size, hardcover and published by a reputable independent publisher, Paget Press. And it did sell a few copies outside Canada.
All of the earlier book is included in the new book Hannan submitted for the awards, amounting to 12 of the new collection’s 34 poems, 22 pages of the collection’s 110.
All those factors considered, the QWF decided to withdraw Some Frames from nomination for the first-book prize. (It’s still nominated for the second award from the anglophone group, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry).
Hannan’s dumping from the shortlist of three first books – all works of poetry – was announced Oct. 11 in a QWF news release. A novel, Spat the Dummy, by Ed Macdonald, was bumped up to take its place.
No one is alleging Hannan or his current publisher, Cormorant Books, did anything wrong.
According to the QWF, they submitted Some Frames as a first book “in good faith on the belief that (Peeling Oranges in the Shade) did not qualify as a ‘book,’ but rather as a chapbook.”
“However, upon learning of the existence of the earlier work ... the QWF determined that its status as a ‘book’ was too ambiguous to allow (Some Frames) to compete for, and potentially win, the first book prize.”
In a separate release two days later (after The Gazette mistakenly reported that Some Frames itself had already been published before), the federation went farther. It emphasized that “there is no suggestion whatever of bad faith or wrongdoing on the part of either the publisher or the author.”
To prevent such “errors” from happening, however, eligibility criteria for next year’s awards “will be made more specific.”
Hannan – who is 62, a devoted husband, father of two grown-up children and has long been a fixture of Montreal’s book world – is rather philosophical about all the kerfuffle over Some Frames.
In fact, he’s already put the incident behind him.
“It was a downer, but we get over these things, you know?” he said in an interview at McGill-Queen’s University Press, where he has been employed for two years as sales manager.
He’d rather talk about his poetry.
“I’m not a person who has a point to make, and I very rarely write with an idea that there’s something I want to say,” he said, explaining his approach.
“Some people call what I do ‘stream of consciousness,’ and in a way I think that’s true. The poems are like journal entries or a log. There’s a kind of rhythm, a flow, a kind of breathing that just kind of grows.”
The second of three children, Hannan was born in Montreal and grew up mostly in St. Laurent and N.D.G. At a very young age, he lived in Buffalo, N.Y., where his mother had gone to receive treatment for breast cancer; she died, and the family moved back to Montreal when Hannan was 6. He wrote his first poem a couple of years later, in Grade 3. “I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember talking about it with my teacher,” he recalled. “She read it, and she was very nice to me.”
His education – formal, at least – ended with high school.
“I didn’t go to university, but I’ve worked in bookstores all my life – that’s my education,” he said. “I’m community educated. You know how people say they’re self-taught? I’m community-taught.” He got his first job at 20, clerking at Browsers Bookshop at Parc Ave. and Milton St. A succession of jobs followed into this century: at Mansfield Book Mart, Classics, Prospero, Coles (now Chapters), McGill University Bookstore, Librarie Raffin.
When he wasn’t working, Hannan was writing – some of the time, anyway. After publishing four chapbooks of poetry between 1978 and 1984, Hannan went into a creative slump. He stopped writing poetry entirely for 20 years, “because I couldn’t hear it anymore,” he explained. “Everything just kind of went ‘thud!’ ” He then embarked on an ambitious series of novels that “grew into this monster” and that he could never bring himself to complete.
Then came the renaissance – spurred, strangely enough, by one of the characters from one of his uncompleted novels. Dwayne was a man like him – a poet. But this fictional character was a bit bolder: he read his poems out loud to people on the subway. Those poems were Hannan’s salvation. “That’s how I got back into writing poetry,” he said. “I couldn’t do it, but Dwayne could.”
The poems became the basis for Some Frames. Under the title Dwayne’s Poems, seven of them appear in the book alongside work from Hannan’s old chapbooks and others that appeared in magazines, as well as some new ones.
Out of Hannan’s aborted series of novels grew a new work of fiction as well. Completed a year and a half ago, it’s a short novel called Raise Your Hands.
Appropriately enough, it’s about the book world. Hannan submitted it recently to a publisher and is awaiting word.
But first, there’s the QWF nomination for poetry. The awards ceremony is Tuesday in Montreal. The other nominees are Asa Boxer for Skullduggery, published by Véhicule Press, and Gabe Foreman’s A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People, published by Coach House; as a debut collection, the latter is also up for the Concordia first-book award. There are also prizes in four other categories: fiction, non-fiction, French-to-English translation, and children’s and young adult literature. Winners take home a $2,000 cheque.
The winners of the Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards will be named Tuesday at 8 p.m. at a gala at the Lion d’Or, 1676 Ontario St. E. Tickets: $15, $10 for full-time students with ID; call 514-933-0878. More details about the shortlisted authors and their books is at the QWF Literary Database, quebecbooks.qwf.org.
jheinrich@montrealgazette.com
A Poem for the Coming Surface, Jack Hannan
MONTREAL - Early prodigy, late bloomer – in his unassuming way, Montreal writer Jack Hannan has been both. His recognition, however, has been blemished by a bit of controversy he didn’t seek.
This is how the story’s arc has gone so far.
In primary school Hannan wrote his first poem, in his early 30s he got published, for 20 years he stopped writing, and now in his early 60s he has come back with a new collection of poetry – and a novel, as yet unpublished.
The poetry collection, Some Frames, got Hannan nominated for two prizes at the upcoming Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards. Unfortunately, it was then un-nominated for one, the Concordia University First Book Prize.
The reason? Some Frames, it turned out, wasn’t Hannan’s first book. He had already published a small collection of poetry in 1978. And therein lies the problem.
Granted, his first book, Peeling Oranges in the Shade, was a modest affair: only about 50 pages long, only 300 copies printed. Hannan considers it a chapbook, a short and limited-edition work.
But it did have an ISBN number – the official seal of a bona fide book.
It was trade-book size, hardcover and published by a reputable independent publisher, Paget Press. And it did sell a few copies outside Canada.
All of the earlier book is included in the new book Hannan submitted for the awards, amounting to 12 of the new collection’s 34 poems, 22 pages of the collection’s 110.
All those factors considered, the QWF decided to withdraw Some Frames from nomination for the first-book prize. (It’s still nominated for the second award from the anglophone group, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry).
Hannan’s dumping from the shortlist of three first books – all works of poetry – was announced Oct. 11 in a QWF news release. A novel, Spat the Dummy, by Ed Macdonald, was bumped up to take its place.
No one is alleging Hannan or his current publisher, Cormorant Books, did anything wrong.
According to the QWF, they submitted Some Frames as a first book “in good faith on the belief that (Peeling Oranges in the Shade) did not qualify as a ‘book,’ but rather as a chapbook.”
“However, upon learning of the existence of the earlier work ... the QWF determined that its status as a ‘book’ was too ambiguous to allow (Some Frames) to compete for, and potentially win, the first book prize.”
In a separate release two days later (after The Gazette mistakenly reported that Some Frames itself had already been published before), the federation went farther. It emphasized that “there is no suggestion whatever of bad faith or wrongdoing on the part of either the publisher or the author.”
To prevent such “errors” from happening, however, eligibility criteria for next year’s awards “will be made more specific.”
Hannan – who is 62, a devoted husband, father of two grown-up children and has long been a fixture of Montreal’s book world – is rather philosophical about all the kerfuffle over Some Frames.
In fact, he’s already put the incident behind him.
“It was a downer, but we get over these things, you know?” he said in an interview at McGill-Queen’s University Press, where he has been employed for two years as sales manager.
He’d rather talk about his poetry.
“I’m not a person who has a point to make, and I very rarely write with an idea that there’s something I want to say,” he said, explaining his approach.
“Some people call what I do ‘stream of consciousness,’ and in a way I think that’s true. The poems are like journal entries or a log. There’s a kind of rhythm, a flow, a kind of breathing that just kind of grows.”
The second of three children, Hannan was born in Montreal and grew up mostly in St. Laurent and N.D.G. At a very young age, he lived in Buffalo, N.Y., where his mother had gone to receive treatment for breast cancer; she died, and the family moved back to Montreal when Hannan was 6. He wrote his first poem a couple of years later, in Grade 3. “I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember talking about it with my teacher,” he recalled. “She read it, and she was very nice to me.”
His education – formal, at least – ended with high school.
“I didn’t go to university, but I’ve worked in bookstores all my life – that’s my education,” he said. “I’m community educated. You know how people say they’re self-taught? I’m community-taught.” He got his first job at 20, clerking at Browsers Bookshop at Parc Ave. and Milton St. A succession of jobs followed into this century: at Mansfield Book Mart, Classics, Prospero, Coles (now Chapters), McGill University Bookstore, Librarie Raffin.
When he wasn’t working, Hannan was writing – some of the time, anyway. After publishing four chapbooks of poetry between 1978 and 1984, Hannan went into a creative slump. He stopped writing poetry entirely for 20 years, “because I couldn’t hear it anymore,” he explained. “Everything just kind of went ‘thud!’ ” He then embarked on an ambitious series of novels that “grew into this monster” and that he could never bring himself to complete.
Then came the renaissance – spurred, strangely enough, by one of the characters from one of his uncompleted novels. Dwayne was a man like him – a poet. But this fictional character was a bit bolder: he read his poems out loud to people on the subway. Those poems were Hannan’s salvation. “That’s how I got back into writing poetry,” he said. “I couldn’t do it, but Dwayne could.”
The poems became the basis for Some Frames. Under the title Dwayne’s Poems, seven of them appear in the book alongside work from Hannan’s old chapbooks and others that appeared in magazines, as well as some new ones.
Out of Hannan’s aborted series of novels grew a new work of fiction as well. Completed a year and a half ago, it’s a short novel called Raise Your Hands.
Appropriately enough, it’s about the book world. Hannan submitted it recently to a publisher and is awaiting word.
But first, there’s the QWF nomination for poetry. The awards ceremony is Tuesday in Montreal. The other nominees are Asa Boxer for Skullduggery, published by Véhicule Press, and Gabe Foreman’s A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People, published by Coach House; as a debut collection, the latter is also up for the Concordia first-book award. There are also prizes in four other categories: fiction, non-fiction, French-to-English translation, and children’s and young adult literature. Winners take home a $2,000 cheque.
The winners of the Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards will be named Tuesday at 8 p.m. at a gala at the Lion d’Or, 1676 Ontario St. E. Tickets: $15, $10 for full-time students with ID; call 514-933-0878. More details about the shortlisted authors and their books is at the QWF Literary Database, quebecbooks.qwf.org.
jheinrich@montrealgazette.com
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