Award-winning poem honours Sudbury's lakes

Tom Leduc wrote poetry for about two decades before revealing it to the world.

When he finally decided to share it, his work was welcomed with open arms.

In fact, the first poetry contest he won happened to be the first one he entered. On May 4, it was announced that he had won the Vale Living With Lakes Poetry Contest.

His winning piece, titled My Northern Lake, is a tribute to all the waterways within Greater Sudbury on which he's fished and canoed.
“You come to realize what exactly they do for you,” Leduc said.
Writers who earned honourable mentions in the contest include:

Ann Carson – Shore Reeds
Kim Fahner – Tai Chi on Ramsey
Ignatius Fay – The Lake; A Tanka Sequence
Susan McMaster – The Lake
Rosemarie Mirfield - World Under
Danille Pitman – The Dive
Alexander Tkachuk – I Can't Find the Spot

More than 80 writers took the opportunity to submit poems to the contest. They wrote about the beauty of local lakes, their roles in the larger ecological picture, animals, fish and birds that call them home and the challenges surrounding their welfare.

Twenty six of the poems have been selected by Sudbury's premiere Poet Laureate Roger Nash for publication in a Scrivener Press anthology, expected out in the fall of 2012.

Along with the poetry contest, the Living With Lakes centre has also supported artistic events like the Lunch With A Lake concert series, which takes place the first Friday of every month at the centre. The facility also plays host to two juried art shows.

For his win, Leduc's poem will be framed and displayed at the centre and online.

My Northern Lake

By Tom Leduc

Come with me, I’ll show you beauty, I’ll show you life,
I’ll show you where the loon swallows the sun
and the moon sits in the eye of a snow-owl.
To where painted trees shimmer across the landscape,
setting the lakes on fire.
To where every stroke of our paddle
slices the water’s skin
and pushes away our daily wounds.
Come with me, to where we slowly undo
the knots of our everyday lives.
To where we set our stresses free
to float in fresh water and bundle up
at the mouth of some river,
like a well-woven nest,
cradling our anxieties in it’s broken-fingered hand.
Come with me, and we’ll trickle through the dam
like blinking eyelashes in the sun.
We’ll meet the day together,
we’ll leave our past behind
and get baptized by the boreal.
I’ll stir your soul and you can stir mine,
until our muscles hurt, until the sun sets,
until our breath turns to frost and the water to ice.
Come with me to my northern lake,
where time drifts away on a youthful dream
and simply sets us free, for a while.
 

Posted by Arron Pickard