{"id":51802,"date":"2025-03-07T10:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T15:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=51802"},"modified":"2025-04-14T11:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T15:25:17","slug":"ottawa-poet-laureate","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/ottawa-poet-laureate\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton Alum David O\u2019Meara named Ottawa\u2019s Poet Laureate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton Alum David O\u2019Meara named Ottawa\u2019s Poet Laureate\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

By Emily Putnam<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRead. Think. Read. Think differently. Think strangely. Read.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For David O\u2019Meara, Ottawa\u2019s 2024 English Poet Laureate<\/a>, this playful yet profound advice to aspiring writers captures his approach to art and life. A celebrated poet and Carleton English<\/a> Graduate, O\u2019Meara brings a unique blend of intellectual curiosity and artistic flair to his new illustrious role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a real honour to be asked,\u201d he reflects. \u201cThere are many interesting, worthwhile things that can be accomplished in the position. I see a great value in advocating for art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Established in 2017, the Laureate program seeks to inspire creativity and community through a deep and shared love of poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Meara, however, admits to feeling a tension between the recognition and his belief in the artist\u2019s role as an outsider. \u201cArtists are agents of reflection and dissent and therefore eschew the establishment. I\u2019m always a little uncomfortable being \u2018named\u2019 anything.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Fundamentally, I believe artists work underground. How I balance the position will be the test,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Meara succeeds Albert Dumont<\/a> as English Poet Laureate. An Algonquin elder, Dumont used his two-year tenure to highlight Indigenous issues and successfully advocated for renaming the western leg of the National Capital Commission\u2019s parkway along the Ottawa River. It is now called Kichi Zibi Mikan, meaning \u201cGreat River Road\u201d in Algonquin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Distinguished Career<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Meara\u2019s career is marked by both innovation and acclaim. He has authored five collections of poetry<\/a> and published his debut novel, Chandelier<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>in 2024, which tells the story of Georgia, a twenty-year-old grappling with severe depression after the death of her best friend as she arrives in South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says the pivot from poetry to novel writing was a distinctive process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to be surprised continually and counted it a success when I was. Part of the work was creating characters as a vessel for paradox and articulation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Character is the essential task; language is its vehicle. Everything flows from there. “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“With them, I was inspired to create a memorable picture through a jigsaw of the characters\u2019 inconsistencies within a texture of articulation. In that way, it\u2019s much like poetry, but with a heavy foot on the narrative pedal,” says O’Meara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is a winner of the Ottawa Book Award<\/a> and the Archibald Lampman Prize<\/a>, director of The Plan 99 Reading Series, founding Artistic Director for VERSeFest<\/a> (Canada\u2019s International Poetry Festival), and a jurist for the 2012 Griffin International Poetry Prize<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, Gord Downie made a direct reference to his poem The War Against Television<\/em> in the song Leave<\/em> on In Violet Light<\/em><\/a>, The Tragically Hip\u2019s 2001 album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Meara credits Carleton University\u2019s English program for shaping his literary foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGaining a wider knowledge of literature\u2014its history, movements, techniques and applications\u2014was essential. I gained that knowledge in the various courses available at Carleton,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He recalls a particularly formative workshop with Christopher Levenson<\/a> during his second year of studies, saying, \u201cIt was the first time I\u2019d received feedback from a whole classroom of like-minded but critical students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the classroom, O\u2019Meara immersed himself in campus arts as a member of Sock ‘n’ Buskin Theatre Company<\/a>, the independent theatre troupe at Carleton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt one point, I was Artistic Director,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe collaborative effort in those productions was very exciting. And I had some really tremendous professors at the time, notably Ben Jones<\/a> and Jack Healey. Their dedication and passion for a living and evolving awareness of literature was infectious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Vision for Ottawa\u2019s Literary Community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on the city\u2019s literary scene, O\u2019Meara describes Ottawa as \u201chome to a rich variety of voices\u201d and \u201cvery supportive toward its own variousness.\u201d He encourages aspiring writers to engage with the community, noting that \u201cfor those who wish to show up, the writing scene is very welcoming and energizing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collaboration, he emphasizes, is central to his creative process. \u201cIt\u2019s not creative to think the same way continually,\u201d O\u2019Meara says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCollaboration vexes, in a healthy way, your natural but stubborn instincts. You have to get outside your self-interested aesthetics and accommodate another vision. The result might be a mess. You are giving up control. Ideally, you both are, and the result is not a compromise, but energy. If the right elements come together, the difference of approaches can lift one vision into a wider response.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emily Putnam \u201cRead. Think. Read. Think differently. Think strangely. Read.\u201d For David O\u2019Meara, Ottawa\u2019s 2024 English Poet Laureate, this playful yet profound advice to aspiring writers captures his approach to art and life. A celebrated poet and Carleton English Graduate, O\u2019Meara brings a unique blend of intellectual curiosity and artistic flair to his new illustrious role.  \u201cIt\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":51803,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[587],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-51802","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-english"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/51802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/51802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51805,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/51802\/revisions\/51805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=51802"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=51802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}