Return to Dan Sullivan Memorial Contest

Contest winners were announced at the WCDR Annual General Meeting on June 11, 2005. Winners in each category received a cash prize and certificate.

The Official 2005 Winner List

Children's Category:

1st Place-The Unfortunate Ones by Michael J. Bradley (Mississauga)

I am in my classroom.
My peers are speaking, laughing, crowding,
Their mouths are moving,
Though I don't know what they're saying
My hearing aids don't do me any good,
I only hear the vibrations of them jumping with joy,
None of them have hearing aids,
I am different.

I am in my classroom.
I hear the scratching of the chalk move across the board,
But I don't see it,
Only darkness and shadows I can make out,
Everyone's jumping and giggling,
None of them see the darkness,
I am different.

I am in my classroom.
I see and I hear but I do not walk,
I struggle to get out of the wheelchair,
My shattered bones hold me down,
Everyone is jumping and hopping,
They do not have wheelchairs or casts,
I am different.

But let me tell you something child,
We are all different.

My name is Michael J. Bradley of Mississauga, Ontario. I am a student of Lorne Park Public School, where my favourite subjects are English and Art. I spend most of my time in my room writing stories and/or poems of my choice. I like reading books and playing outside as well. I started having an interest in writing at about the age of 6, and I am now 10 going on 11, and I will never lose my interest in writing no matter how old I get.

2nd Place- Notebook by Courtney Hamel (Markham)

My name
date
title
Arranged neatly,
Resting on pale blue lines of my notebook,
So unlike the pages before.
These newer papers have no dog-ears,
No abstract doodles
Hiding in the margins.
No, these are neat, careful handled,
A blue-and-white picture of virtual perfection.
Yet when I see them,
I feel no joy, no pride.
Only a deep and well-used resentment,
That you have finally bent me to your will.

My name is Courtney Hamel, a twelve-year-old girl loitering in the dreaded year of Grade Six. I guess I've always been interested in reading, but I became interested in writing when my Grade Two teacher, Mrs. Sturm, entered me in a Scholastic-funded contest. It's made a titanic impact on my life, and I swear I wouldn't have survived the vile clutches of Grade Six if it weren't for my stories. They've become a sort of sanctuary for me, as have my poems. And ... well, here I am.

3rd Place- Black Shoes by Melisa Chiu (North Vancouver)

Lying on the chilly,
Concrete floor,
I see a pair of strange and
Frightening black shoes.
On it are no decorations or
Winnie the Pooh.

Dragging along with it
Wherever it goes,
A strand of poisonous black thread.
What it can do everyone would dread.
Streaming out of the aged black shoe,
Just like the blood that trickles out of me and you.

Its heels are as high as
Ordinary cups.
These shoes are for
Lazy grown-ups.
So black they look like burnt ashes,
Making my own heart thrash.

I'm sorry to say,
But these shoes look ghostly,
For no one wears them
Night or day.

Melisa Chiu is eleven years old. She lives in North Vancouver.

Youth Category:

1st Place – The Füsenslanker by Justin Antoniewicz (Chateauguay)

The sky was clire,
And the dat was brigit,
When Roland, the Latsen Füsenslanker,
Calumphed abrawn his trasten skree,
And luffed his civvie gamint.

He travested lung and wats,
Hit and slink,
In a kenler-ently scrutch,
His sine and otontly gull;
The Drunt Traster.

Sine hundred shers came and gunt,
Each trendling out longer than the latsen,
His trasten skree gunt long agray,
And when he fundy the Traster,
To his agumph it sant there.

I am 15 years old and an honour student in the Secondary III Challenge Program at Howard S. Billings High School in Chateauguay Quebec. I have been playing the trumpet for a year, and am currently playing with the high school band. I enjoy listening to Big Band, Swing, Jazz, and Classic Rock music. I have always been an avid reader, and enjoy the writings of Stephen King in particular. During the summer, I spend a lot of my time swimming and biking with my friends.

2nd Place – A New Kind of Bliss by Heather J. Matthews (Scarborough)

Guitar music spreading outwards
Drowning everyone in a pool of oblivion
Fast-paced beat humming through
Deep golden gobs of molasses-like self-indulgence
A gorge of bliss and delectation
The ensemble sinking in drunken apathy
A thrum of giddy after-shock circling
As the sweet, sweet mass of allure
Swizzles and swallows us all
Into Nothing, but Then
Bubbles float upwards, drifting slowly
Until they . . . POP
One
By
One


Heather J. Matthews ("A New Kind of Bliss") is 17 years old. She is enrolled in the Special Series Art program at Wexford C.I. in Scarborough. She loves to read, draw, write and listen to music. In 2003 she placed second in the Junior category for the Window on Words poetry competition. In 2004 she placed second in the Youth category in the Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest. Heather is delighted to have won third place in this year's Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest. She will continue to write poetry next year in her Creative Writing class in university.

3rd Place – The Cliff by Amanda Franco-Rooks (Cannington)

The cliff.
You feel yourself leave the edge,
And you feel the sensation like you're flying,
And you spread your arms to receive the sky,
You look up,
And you see it getting farther away.
You hit the water,
And you feel yourself sink deeper, like an anchor throw over board.
The water closes over you,
Enveloping you in it's dark embrace.
You fall slowly,
Slithering,
Twisting,
Watching as the light above you dims, replaced by the deep blue of the sea.
And you watch the bubbles you create ride to the surface, like flowers,
gently lifting their blooms to the sky.
And you feel yourself running out of air; your vision grows hazy, like wool
being pulled over your eyes,
And you think about the world and all you never got to do.
And a sob tears itself from your throat as your lungs begin to burst,
And your eyes close with the pain, sharp like knifes.
And you slowly open them and take one last look at the vanishing light,
And you sigh as death overtakes you,
You body still sinking slowly down,
As you soul rises to meet the sun one last time.

Amanda Franco-Rooks currently attends Brock High School in Cannington. She enjoys reading, writing, sleeping, nature, a good argument and a good cup of tea.

Adult Category:

1st Place – That Far to Recollet Falls by Ruth Walker (Whitby)

This old dog comes to life
just south of the French River
every coarse black hair on guard
nose low and searching
ears back, then pricked. Ready
for anything to snap.

The trail mirrors the river almost
twist and turn for twist and turn
so we're caught in the current
leaping over desperate roots
and rocks that rise and fall
to trace a glacier's path.

Some bear here before us
left scat under the tree that sets
canine teeth on edge and eyes
scanning for large dark shadows
moss and lichen upended, drying;
the grubs beneath long gone.

Smell it first then hear it
the rush of water squeezed in a fall
a place of portage and accident
current and undertow
where the river steps down
explodes, eddies and drifts.

Up there, a hawk plays thermal tag
sailing with a practised ease
eyes sharp for small quick shadows—
in the surface calm before the rapids
a loon cruises, dives and comes up
but not where we can see him.

Ruth E. Walker (walkwrite@sympatico.ca) is an award-winning poet and writer. She is a founding editor for the journal LICHEN Arts & Letter Preview, and a past president of WCDR, and her poetry and fiction has been published in Canada, the UK and the US. She lives in Whitby with her husband and four children, and runs a series of popular creative writing workshops.

2nd Place – Microcosm by Suzanne Robinson (Scarborough)

The children, wave exhausted, thread tide lines,
Seeking one shell, perfect as God's ear.
Boy claims driftwood gargoyle. Girl shrills protests.
Sea bladders explode like grenades.

Through your eyelids sun spills patterns,
A tree of life spreading blood roots over all.
You escape into ocean. Gill slits sealed for so long
Seem to flutter, and you glimpse a lost kingdom.

Girl shrieks imprecations, throws stinging sand.
Boy bellows threats, strikes out blindly.
She runs pleading rescue. He pursues accusing sin.
He trips, blaming her. She sobs, charging pain.

You roll over. Going down for the third time
Is a lie. Myriad sinkings must happen before
Life pass in front of your eyes and you see
Eden is not place, but state of mind.

Sinking becomes a downward motion only
If you weigh yourself with stones of belief.
Let go and you tumble upward to the surface
Where elders wait, the guardians of forgotten dreams.

The young ones glare in confrontation. Stalemate.
They sulk, hurling rocks at the ocean.
But suddenly, remembering God's ear,
They laugh, splash rainbows to the sunshine.

You float. Earth echoes like
A shell rocked by tides
Moving forward, moving inward.
Microcosm.

Suzanne Robinson: Originally a maritimer, I have always loved and found great comfort in the sea. I have lived most of my life in the Toronto area, and raised my family of four daughters here. Since my retirement from teaching I am able to devote more time to my five grandchildren and my writing, a life long passion.

3rd Place – Harbour by Vicki Goodfellow-Duke (Calgary)

At Margaree,
low tide exposes bone
and memory,

shore with blue mantle
of wind, periwinkle

splayed in sand fingers,
shells discarded
as empty wombs.

There is something of a mother
in the sea,

nourish, retreat, pull ebb
and flood,
hands unseen.

How slowly resigned are we,
children flung
from our rooms,

part of self left
in casings,

how we squander the days
stumbling
to find a way back

yet, homecoming,
the heart ever a flight away,

we come to find
the harbour
where it has always been,

on the inside.

Vicki Goodfellow Duke lives in Calgary. Her poetry has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. Recently, her poems have appeared in Prairie Poetry: An American Journal, Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids, and Poetry on the Way: poetry on subways and buses throughout Eastern Canada. She was the 2005 first place co-winner of the Ray Burrell Award, finalist for the 2004 Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award, and a finalist in Shadow Poetry's 2004 Chapbook Competition. She is thrilled to have won third place in the Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest

Dan Sullivan Contest- 2005 - Judges'Bio's

Adult Category (Second Tier Judges):

Allan Briesmaster

Allan Briesmaster is a poet and literary editor. He was one of the organizers of the weekly Art Bar Poetry Reading Series in Toronto from its beginnings in 1991 until 2002. His two collections of poetry are Weighted Light (watershedBooks, 1998) and Unleaving (Hidden Brook Press, 2001). He also has four chapbooks, including Urban-Pastoral (Lyricalmyrical, 2004) and Pomona Summer (Hidden Brook Press, 2005). Galactic Music is forthcoming from Lyricalmyrical in June, 2005. He lives in Thornhill, ON.

Keith Garebian:

Born to an Armenian father and an Anglo-Indian mother, Keith Garebian holds a doctorate in Canadian and Commonwealth Literature from Queen's University. The author of fourteen books and a chapbook, he is a widely-published writer. His reviews and articles have appeared in over sixty newspapers, journals, magazines, and anthologies. In 2000, he became the first critic-at-large to be appointed by a public library, when he was contracted to post theatre and book reviews for three years on the website for the Mississauga Public Library. His poetry has been published in Impulse, Echo, Inscape, The Antigonish Review, Literary Review of Canada, Exile, Quarry, Grain, and various anthologies. The winner of the 2000 Mississauga Arts Award for Writing, he has also won top prizes for free verse and haiku from the Ontario Poetry Society and the Scarborough Arts Council/Lakeshore Arts Council. A member of the League of Canadian Poets and The Writers' Union of Canada, he is available for public readings and symposia.

Rachelle Lerner:

Rachelle K. Lerner is an editor and independent scholar. She has been published in literary journals, including Canadian Jewish News Literary Supplernent, Descant, lichen, Literary Review of Canada, Signal, The D. H. Lawrence Review, Oval Victory, Poets Against War, served as co-editor of Descant for several years, and facilitates poetry workshops. Her current project is a biography of American poet and painter Kenneth Rexroth, "A Rage to Order."

Youth Category:

Gwynn Scheltema is a published poet in Canada and Europe, and an award-winning short story writer. She coordinated the Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest for several years, and has served as a judge for international and regional poetry and fiction competitions. She is also a founding editor of LICHEN Arts and Letters Preview, and one of the five poets whose work appears in the poetry chapbook One Ticket Five Rides.

Children's Category:

Loris Lesynski loves language, and has been writing rhyming verse since junior high. Her first book, "Boy Soup," was in such smooth rhyme it made the out-loud reader an instantly good performer. It was followed by four rhyming storybooks which did the same. She is also the author and illustrator of the collections of poems "Dirty Dog Boogie," "Nothing Beats A Pizza" and "Cabbagehead," all of which get elementary kids writing their own zippy poems. Her most recent book is "Zigzag: Zoems for Zindergarten."

2004 Dan Sullivan Winners
2003 Dan Sullivan Winners