Brandt receives prominent arts award

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This article was published 09/05/2023 (889 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Former Brandon University English professor and renowned poet Di Brandt is the most recent recipient of the Manitoba Arts Award of Distinction, which is given out biennially to recognize major contributions to the provincial arts scene.

While Brandt is no stranger to professional accolades — having already picked up the Gold National Magazine Award for Poetry in 2020 and the Gabrielle-Roy Prize in 2010 — she told the Sun on Monday this award from the Manitoba Arts Council feels special, since it serves as a culmination of her work as a poet, essayist, educator, editor and community organizer.

“It’s hard to kind of summarize it all in one go,” she said over the phone from her home in Winnipeg.

“So that’s one of the great pleasures of this award for me; it’s a place where the Manitoba Arts Council and the jury … was able to recognize the diverse range of my accomplishments and how they all fit together.”

Throughout a career that has lasted more than three decades, Brandt has authored 13 poetry and essay collections and contributed to countless publications in anthologies and magazines on both a national and international level.

Because of this creative output, Brandt became Winnipeg’s first poet laureate in 2018 and has held influential positions at multiple post-secondary schools throughout the country.

This includes a 10-year stint from 2005 to 2015 at BU, where she worked as an instructor and a Canada Research Chair in literature and creative writing.

This role allowed Brandt to spearhead different programs and events that had never been attempted in local academia up until that point, including a system for sharing poetry videos online before social media took over the web.

“So it was fun and exciting to figure out a way to do the creative arts in that program and to promote the creative arts within that framework,” she said.

Despite moving back to Winnipeg and entering semi-retirement, Brandt still has fond memories of living in Brandon.

Not only was her time in the Wheat City creatively fulfilling, but the community’s proximity to so many rural communities called back to her youth growing up in a Mennonite farming village near Winkler.

“Because I feel like part of me is country and part of me is city,” she said. “Part of me is traditional and part of me is modern, urban and cosmopolitan. So Brandon was really lovely that way, in being one of each.”

Writer Maurice Mierau touched on the hybrid nature of Brandt’s legacy in an accompanying news release from the Manitoba Arts Council, stating that he nominated his colleague for this award, in part, because of her trailblazing work in North American “new Mennonite writing.”

“Di Brandt is one of Manitoba’s most accomplished writers and cultural activists living in the province and is highly deserving of the Manitoba Arts Council Award of Distinction,” he said.

While every Manitoba Arts Award of Distinction winner is entitled to $30,000, Brandt said she isn’t sure how she’s going to spend that prize money just yet.

But in the meantime, Brandt will continue teaching part-time at the University of Winnipeg, where she hopes to inspire a whole new generation of students to pursue their own career in the arts.

“Don’t think first about what the opportunities are out there and ‘how can I fit into them?’” she advised.

“Think first about, ‘what is my vision? What is my calling for it?’ Because you have to have a really strong, internal reason for doing it, from inside yourself in your own creative spirit.”

The nominations for this award are reviewed by a multidisciplinary panel of peers who make their decision based on the quality of each candidate’s work and their contribution to the development of the arts in Manitoba overall.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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