Anne Stevenson finally gets her due.

In her 75th year, poet Anne Stevenson is propelled from relative obscurity to relative fame, you know, for a poet. Here's the story:

ANNE STEVENSON IS A well-kept secret. She has published 18 volumes of poetry, but you won't find her in The Nation's Favourite Poems. She has lived and written in Britain for more than 40 years but has never won a national poetry prize. She was a contemporary of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes but hasn't come within a mile of their fame.

All that might be about to change, however. If there is such a thing as a poetry jackpot, Stevenson has just hit it: this year she has won three important American literary prizes, together worth $260,000 (£130,000), and in 2008 the Library of America will publish a new edition of her Selected Poems, edited by Andrew Motion. All the more remarkable, this sudden rush of recognition has come in her 75th year (from The Times).

So, you see, there's hope.

My "Elegy for Paul Winchell" is featured on NPR

My poem "Elegy for Paul Winchell" is featured right now on the Northern Poetry Review website.

To learn more about the multi-talented subject of my poem (pictured with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff), please visit his website here.

And while you're at it, check out what else NPR has to offer.

The Runaway Jury

For the last few years, literary blogger Alex Good has been staging The Runaway Jury, a mock jury to put the actual Governor General's jury to the test. This year Alex's jury consisted of Alex, Carmine Starnino, and myself. We put this year's poetry nominees through our own critical paces. To see what we had to say about the short-listed collections by Dennis Lee, Rob Winger, Brian Henderson, Margaret Atwood, and winner Don Domanski, just click here.