Daily Spotlight: Patrick Warner

Patrick Warner moved to Newfoundland in 1980 in search of better weather and economic prosperity. Bitterly disappointed on both counts, he turned to poetry, penning three critically acclaimed collections. His poetry, often conveying the dramatic, explores objects and images that haunt our imagination from childhood.

Holding a B.A. from Memorial University of Newfoundland in English and Anthropology and a Masters in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Western Ontario, his first book of poetry, All Manner of Misunderstanding (2001), was nominated for the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award and the 2002 Atlantic Poetry Prize. He was also the winner of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award in 2002 for “Caplin” and in 2004 for “Tortoise at Toronto Zoo.”

Sometimes a dark, though occasionally humorous, poet, Warner’s first published collection, All Manner of Misunderstanding (2001) contains thirty poems that struggle for knowledge and seek after an order, balance and unity in life. His poetry, often conveying the dramatic, explores objects and images that haunt our imagination from childhood. Warner’s talent in transforming ordinary and everyday occurrences into the realm of poetics carries over in the end of the collection where he plays with language, examining the meanings of words and toying with them so that the words often meet unexpected conclusions.

Warner’s “poetic frontline” carries over in his second collection, There, there (2005), evident in the collection’s factual, detached and sometimes pensive tone. The subject manner ranges from exile, mud trout, snow, marriage and pigs, to bakers, children, insurance companies and hotels. Warner isolates images from a selection of vast, more common images that we experience daily and explores the subtle connections between them. Similar to his playing with language in All Manner of Misunderstanding, this second collection also investigates a crucial topic in literature, the struggle between our speech and what we intend it to mean.

double talk is his first novel. double talk is a coming-of-age novel, a love story and an examination of social class and its mysterious codes. The novel will be available to the public on March 21, 2011.

For more information regarding Patrick Warner, please visit Breakwater Book's website http://breakwaterbooks.com/books.php?atn=vue&bkid=386.