1999 short list:
Benedict Abroad
by Richard Outram
published by St. Thomas Poetry Series
Benedict Abroad is a sequence of poems relating the various carryings-on of Benedict - Torontonian and "man of the world" to a fault - with his curious friends and intricate loves. These include: Portland, a sometime hospital orderly; the restive Bert and Victoria Mantrovia; Carbuncle, their jaundiced chauffeur; Amanda, an actress of chaste parts, and Gorbals, her lecherous ginger tomcat; Bella Czekely-Bardossy, a dab hand with a mop or a pilfered Kalashnikov; and various unremarkable off-stage deities. The sequences have, like life, a beginning (death) and an end (birth); the middle rather ambles along, like life, being joyously unpredictable.
Richard Outram
Richard Outram was born in Canada in 1930. He is a graduate of Victoria College in The University of Toronto (Philosophy and English) and lives in Toronto, where he worked for many years for The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, from which he has now retired.
Richard Outram is a member of The Canadian Centre, International P.E.N. and of The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. His numerous public readings include Harbourfront (Toronto) and a one-person reading at The National Library of Canada (Ottawa) coincident with the opening of an exhibition of his published work. His numerous published books include: Exsultate, Jubilate, 1966; Turns and Other Poems, 1975; The Promise of Light, 1979; Selected Poems, 1984; Man in Love, 1985; Hiram and Jenny, 1989; and Mogul Recollected, 1993.Richard Outram's work has been published in many magazines and periodicals in Canada, England and the U.S.A. He has written the text for a commissioned song cycle for voice and piano, South of North, composed by Srul Irving Glick and performed by James Westman, baritone and Albert Krywolt, piano in December 1998.
Book excerpt
Published with permission from the author. This excerpt is copyright protected.
Mrs. Mantrovia, who could afford state-of-the-art bugged Eden.
She had decided, against the advice of her firm of solicitors,
To fight City Hall. And was completing a post-graduate degree,
By correspondence, from Trinity, in rhetoric and dirty tricks.
But when the first tapes were retrieved, stealthily by day,
And played back, she had only hour on hour of susurration
For her pains. She requested other professional opinions.
Benedict said it was background radiation from the Big Bang.
Either that, or Northrop Frye thinking about Ingmar Bergman.
Ms Czekely-Bardossy recognized Sonja Henie's skate-blades:
She began to hum, lugubriously, 'It Happened in Sun Valley.'
Portland broke up, and allowed as how it was Homer's combers.
Amanda, enraptured, asked for dupes. Directors are pricks;
Producers are worse. It was, she knew, the late God's applause.
But Mrs. Mantrovia remained unconvinced. Her dear Albert had,
In his wisdom, schooled her to cast a cold eye on futures.
The 1999 Toronto Book Awards
The Toronto Book Awards Committee selected the short list finalists after reviewing 76 books submitted by publishers and authors. Finalists were announced at an International Literacy Day celebration on September 8, 1999. The winner was announced by Mayor Mel Lastman at The Word On The Street festival on September 26. Each short-listed author was presented with $1,000 and the winner, Richard Outram, was awarded $10,000.
