Paul MacDonald of Cox & Palmer congratulates Randy Drover, winner of the inaugural Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award
Randy Drover is, in my opinion, one of the best emerging writers in the country. And I’ve been a fan for years. In 2008, to grow as a writer, I took a creative writing course at MUN, and on the first night there, Randy read a piece. It was some of the best writing I’d ever heard. Not a word out of place: evocative, lush, and perfect enough that I felt pretty small as a writer, and fondly jealous of the guy. I wrote an article in a local paper at the time, saying he’d be one of the next big names out of Newfoundland, filling the daunting shoes of our Lisa Moores, Michael Winters, and John Stefflers. And since that time he’s won some awards, published some poems and short stories, and is currently the poetry editor for Canada’s hippest new literary Journal, Riddle Fence. He’s an old soul and the exciting new voice out of Newfoundland.
This Sunday past, Randy won the inaugural Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award. It’s an award for a current or recent graduate of Memorial University’s Creative Writing Program who seems set for success, and there were many to choose from. MUN’s creative writing program is taught by the likes of Mary Dalton, Larry Mathews, Robert Finlay, Jessica Grant, and Don McKay, among others. The award, sponsored by the law firm, Cox & Palmer,is given out as part of the annual SPARKS literary festival in St. John’s every year. SPARKS is a fantastic, day-long festival, broken up in to 4 sessions with 4 Newfoundland writers a piece, that was borne out of Memorial’s Faulty of Arts, and is spearheaded by the admirable, internationally acclaimed poet, Mary Dalton. It started in 2010, and since then, has featured more than 30 of Newfoundland & Labrador’s finest writers, alongside our newest writers. Mary and others have been building more and more excitement around the festival, including video productions, radio broadcasts, and two awards: one for the best haiku involving fire imagery, and now, as they’ve committed to doing this again, the Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing award. I could not be more impressed with Mary Dalton for spearheading what St. John’s had been truly needing, and for going so far above and beyond.
Randy agrees. I sent him an email of congrats and a few questions about the award and SPARKS in general.
Mary Dalton’s effort in bringing this festival to life is nothing short of extraordinary. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of this festival since its inaugural year, as a reader, a volunteer and audience member, and the crowd drawn each year certainly lends credence to the fact that this is something that St. John’s needs. When you mix emerging writers with multi-award winning novelists, playwrights and poets, you attract a diverse audience, and offer a great escape on a cold January day. There is such a rich arts community in Newfoundland, and to have a yearly showcase for this talent is merited and incredibly worthwhile.
Earlier, I mentioned the calibre of caring, insightful, and talented professors MUN”s creative Writing Program has amassed, of which Randy had this to say, “The creative writing program at MUN is responsible for many of the successes I have seen in my writing life. The program offers a variety of courses in many disciplines and when testing these waters you really find your niche. Working with peers, writers, and professors on a weekly basis makes these courses a joy to participate in, and lends encouragement to any emerging writer. And a little encouragement stretches a long way when beginning.”
Poet, MUN professor, and SPARKS’ festival co-ordinator Mary Dalton shares my enthusiasm for Randy’s bright, crisp work. “Randy Drover is a gifted young writer,” she says, “who has done outstanding work in the creative writing program. This award will buy him some time and foster the writing energies, we hope.”
While I wasn’t surprised Randy won the Cox & Palmer award, I’m glad to hear he was surprised and excited. “More than anything, [I was] awakened. To win an award like this is a huge motivation to continue. Thanks go out to SPARKS and Cox and Palmer for their support of the arts community and my future within it. It’s an exceptional boost for a fledgling writer.”
Without further ado, since he’s ambi- or -tridextrous, like most people coming out of MUN’s creative program, I’ll close this with a poem and a short story of his …
Before Going Out
……………………Two Tankas
Ten lines to doll-up
the hearsay woman, old crow
with gimlet eyes. Ear
to the telephone, hands on
the clothesline. Patch quilts, patch quilts.
Five now, to straighten
jars and jars, pickles and jam,
turn the moose soup down.
Juice glass with lilac perfume.
Homemade cream near the face pan.
Of Sidney
The mill is always cold, even on days where lightning-beaked gulls snatch ice cream out of sweaty hands. The paint has faded and is rotting with the wooden exterior. Those boards were sawed and shaved by grandfather’s hands. There is no electricity now, and when the kerosene lantern is lit, the inside stone walls appear dusted black. Light reveals wooden pulley wheels and still saw blades, sharp as they were twenty years ago. The engine room is a museum of rusted thumb wrenches, files, moonshine bottles of oil, and the engine that hasn’t started since Sidney died.
Rumor is that Joseph Tad dug up the corpse one late night in July. Carried Sidney in a wheelbarrow, over seaweed and lichen, and laid him in the water. Many believe he should have been buried at sea. After all, he was born on a trawler. It was a pleasant surprise for grandfather, dancing over rolling logs to see his son. The happiest log driver’s waltz. Men say that Sidney had gills. He could dive deeper than any man, swim farther and faster. He is Jonah. He is Nemo. A pirate, with lobster pots out all year. The fables and books conjure images of him. Sixteen, though he lived ten years longer, fit and trim like the photograph that hangs in the mill.
…
When the water was still innocent, and the days were bright and salty, I would perch on the flat stones before the tide swallowed the landwash. Rob was always with me, and we had makeshift bamboo rods and a tin can full of bent hooks we picked up from the wharf. We wanted cod, but usually caught sculpins. We’d beat their heads off rocks then throw them at each other, barbed backs ripping our old shirts.
When the water began to lap at our shoes, we headed to the stage. We could already see bobbing skiffs coming in for dinner. Father was among them, and grandfather, motoring out from some narrow cove. Grandfather was first, and had the most fish. He wore a tailored suit each day under his oilskins. Father followed with Percy, Popeye-grin on his face. I sat watching on blue barrel in the corner of the stage, scales flying like flour at a bakery.
We all had napes for dinner, and afterwards, the men would head out again, leaving us to wander. We would go farther each day atop the jagged and craggy cliffs. The water was infinite then.
In June, we spotted a shack in the distance, down between the hills. It was small and orange, likely abandoned. A short dock with rotting planks, tin chimney flute. Clear water carrying colorations of the sea.
The connection I felt was magnetic, as if I had lived there before, or wanted to. We followed the slender goat path down. It was a clubhouse then, our own. A perfect place for smoking the cigarettes Rob lifted from his parent’s store.
…
April, years later, the sky seemed as if it had gotten dark, but it was the mood that darkened. The water was treacherous, snow still, and flurries. I sat in the front of the dory, cold and sick from the waves and the breeze off the water. It was Easter, and we were not after cod. I was now part of this annual excursion. We motored past the narrows and up past Nelly’s Arm. Percy took bearings from the cliff face that looks like a lady, and pointed out her features. An ear, nose, deep craters for eyes. We traveled east from there, to an abandoned wharf in a small patch of high cliffs. The shack had changed. It had aged.
It happened here twenty years ago, they told me. This was where Sidney died. I wouldn’t tell them that I knew this place well. We docked, and the boat crashing against the rotting wharf chipped splinters of board that floated past in the water. Percy told me that Annie Sheppard used to live here, and always had bread and lassie for anybody who came out this far. We laid a wreath for Sidney and saved one flower for Annie.
Percy took the guitar from the boat and sang Fiddler’s Green. They told me that they were all here when he died, and grandfather was with them. The only day they saw him cry. After the boil-up, they all set out for an afternoon of fishing. Sidney jumped in the boat first, and an errant plank was tossed up, seesaw-like, throwing him onto the jagged rocks beneath the shallow water. The damage was enough then, to hospitalize him. The water though, was what did him in: bobbing underneath the wooden dock.
It was a sad spectacle; a long lament for a man I barely know.
On the way home, the men sensed my uneasiness. When Percy spotted a small shark ahead of the boat, he decided to lighten the mood. He revved the engine and chased it for a quarter of a mile, father leaning from the stern trying to stab it with a grappling hook. When the hook pierced its gills, the fish thrashed, water dyed red. We were poachers, like Sidney, and it felt right.
We stopped then, under the mountains, to clean the shark and cut it into sections that would fit neatly in our coolers and rubber boots. We heard the sounds of livestock from atop the mountain – Ned Angel’s farm. The harsh angle of the cliffs made it impossible to see. Peering over, though, was a kid. Light brown and white. Glancing once out over the ocean and then back again, it leapt, nearly ninety feet down.
We heard the harsh sound of bones ripping. It slid off the rocks, floated towards us like a ragdoll. The guttural bleating came next, from a Billy peering downwards, searching. It wanted to jump, I’m sure, but had other kids, a mate. The bleating continued, long after we hauled anchor and left that morbid place.
…
Sometimes, when the sky is like a beaten tin plate, and heavy with fog, I go there. I don’t take the boat – I never take the boat, but climb over rocks and brambles until I am at the dock. Days like this, when the calm sea carts fog on its back, I can see it drifting by, bleating.
Today, though, father and I are painting the mill. Grandfather has been gone a year now. After dinner at grandmothers, I lie on the old sofa and nap. Sidney is with me. He rows an old dory, the one upturned in the lumberyard. We talk for a while, until he tells me he’s fine. He is searching, though, for his father. For grandfather. I tell him I know where to find him.
In the afternoon, after the second coat is on, we wander inside the mill and open the windows. Light shines on the wooden beams, chiseled with the names of grandfather and Sidney. It has always been grandfather’s pain, never Sidney’s. I know that now, and I know he is here, as Sidney is in the ocean. The engine will start today, I’m sure of it.
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