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| First Name | Blaine |
| Last Name | Marchand |
| Member Since | November 23, 2021 |
| City | Ottawa |
| State | ON |
| Zipcode | K1Y 0R9 |
| Country | Canada |
| Company | |
| Pen Name | Blaine Basil Marchand |
| Branch Affiliation | National Capital Region |
| Website | |
| Blog | |
| Blaine Marchand | |
| Goodreads | |
| Bio | Blaine Marchand's poetry and prose has appeared in magazines across Canada, the US, New Zealand, India and Pakistan. He has won several prizes for his writing, including 2nd Prize in the 1990 National Poetry Contest and the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry for his book A Garden Enclosed. Aperture and The Craving of Knives, his most recent books, were short-listed for the Archibald Lampman Award in 2009 and 2010 and were on the Relit Awards long-list. He has seven books of poetry published, a chapbook, a children's novel and a work of non-fiction. A selection of his poems about Pakistan was published as a chapbook, My Head, Filled with Pakistan, in November 2016. He has an essay on his mother, A Long and Lucky Life, which will be published in an anthology, Love and Loss, in April 2020, which is being sold internationally by Exisle Press, New Zealand and an essay in an anthology by the same press, The Turning Point, about the Grade Seven teacher who inspired him to write poetry. He has been active in the literary scene in Ottawa for over 50 years, having been a co-founder of the Canadian Review, Sparks magazine, the Ottawa Independent Writers and the Ottawa Valley Book Festival. He was the President of the League of Canadian Poets from 1991-93 and has remained active in the League in several capacities since. He was a monthly columnist for Capital XTRA, the GLTB community paper, for nine years. He returned to Canada in 2010, after a two-year posting as a diplomat in Islamabad, Pakistan. Following his return, he co-edited with Pakistani poet and artist, a special Vallum poetry magazine devoted to Pakistani poets writing in English (Vallum 9:1 "Poets from Pakistan", 2012). In March 2017, he was invited to participate in the Islamabad Literary Festival. He is currently finalizing a new collection, Promenade which explores different themes – on his diagnosis of cancer, Finding My Voice; on aging, set in a forest reserve, Old Growth; and the pandemic, In These Times, on the Ottawa River landscape near his home, Promenade, and on the Ornamental Gardens at the Central Experiment Farm in Ottawa. |
| Publications | POETRY After the Fact. Borealis Press, 1980 Open Fires. Anthos Press, 1987 A Garden Enclosed. Cormorant Press, 1991 Bodily Presence. Quarry Press, 1995 Aperture. Buschek Press, 2008 The Craving of Knives. Buschek Press, 2009 Becoming History. Aeolus House, 2021 CHAPBOOK My Head, Filled with Pakistan, catkin press, 2016 NON-FICTION Ottawa, A to Z. (Duneau Press, 1979) FICTION African Journey (Mediasphere, 1990) (translated into French - Aventure Africaine) ANTHOLOGIES Garden Varieties. (Cormorant Books,1988) Capital Poets: An Ottawa Anthology. (Ouroboros, 1989). More Garden Varieties Two. (Mercury Press,1990) Written In The Skin (Insomniac Press, 1998) Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007) We All Begin in a Little Magazine (Arc Poetry Society, 1998) The PoeTrain Anthology: A Selection of Train Poems by Canadian Poets (www.poetrain.com, 2015) Memory and Loss. (Ink Bottle Press, 2016) Verse Afire (Ontario Poetry Society 2016 - 2021) Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest Anthology (Spring Pulse Festival. Judges’ Choice, 2016 & Honourable Mention 2017, 2018, 2021) 150 Canadian Stories for Peace (Walking for Peace Publishing, 2017) Tamaracks, Anthology of Canadian Poets, (Lummox Press, San Francisco, 2018) Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, (Mansfield Press, 2018) Love and Loss, (Exisle Publishing, New Zealand, April 2020) The Beauty of Being Elsewhere, (Hidden Book Press, 2021) The Turning Point, (Exisle Publishing, New Zealand, April 2021) In Silence We Wait, (Hidden Book Press, 2021) |
| Other Memberships | League of Canadian Poets and The Ontario Poetry Society |
| Awards | 1967 - Dominion EXPO’67 National Student Essay Competition 1971 - Georgia May Cook Sonnet Award, CAA Alberta 1987 - Anthos Poetry Prize 1990 - The League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Contest, second prize (poem: The Craving of Knives) 1992 - Archibald Lampman Award, (book: A Garden Enclosed) 2016 - Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest, Judges’ Choice poem: The Promise) 2017 - Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest, Honourable Mention poem: You Would Have Laughed) 2018 - Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest, Honourable Mention (poem: The Alarm) 2021- Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest, Judges’ Choice (poem: Infectious) |
| Contests | |
| Genres | Biography & Memoir, Childrens Books, Fiction, Gay & Lesbian, History, Nonfiction, Short Stories |
| Available For | Readings, Presentations, Workshops, Book Club Meetings, Speaking Engagements |
| Services Offered | Book Reviews, Editing, Manuscript Reading & Consultation |