Susan McMaster
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Susan McMaster (born 1950) is a Canadian poet, literary editor, and spoken word performer who lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
Susan has published poetry books, wordmusic, performance poetry recordings, and scripts; edited collections and series; founded Vernissage, the magazine of the National Gallery of Canada, and the national feminist magazine Branching Out (1973-); and was an original member of the intermedia group First Draft, (1981-), with members including Andrew McClure and Colin Morton.
Since 1996, she has been the wordsmith in Geode Music & Poetry (formerly SugarBeat), making four spoken word and music recordings with Jennifer Giles on keyboards, Alrick Huebener on bass, Gavin McLintock on sax, and friends, including Dave Broscoe, Jamie Gullikson, Mike Essoudry, Petr Cancura, Mark Molnar, John Higney, Linsey Wellman, Penn Kemp, Colin Morton, and Max Middle. She has performed with SugarBeat and Geode at 50-plus venues, including the Banff Centre, the National Library, the Kingston Fringe Jazz Festival, Rasputin's, the Blue Skies Music Festival, the Ottawa Folk Festival, the Elora Music Festival, Artscape, WordBeat, Morningside, Go, the National Arts Center Fourth Stage, and the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and has read and performed at festivals and venues in France and Italy.
Her millennial book, Waging Peace, collects the poetry, art, and texts from Convergence: Poems for Peace, which presented art-wrapped poems from across Canada to all MPs and Senators in 2001. Her poetry collection Until the Light Bends from Black Moss Press was shortlisted for the 2005 Archibald Lampman Award for poetry, and the Ottawa Book Award for best book of the year. Accompanying the book is her spoken word CD Until the Light Bends, with Geode Music & Poetry, from Pendas Productions. Forthcoming is The Gargoyle's Ear: A Writing Life in Ottawa.
Susan came to Ottawa with her family in 1955 and attended First Avenue Public School, Elmdale, Connaught, Lisgar Collegiate (1966), Carleton University (B.A., English, 1970, and graduate studies, journalism), and Ottawa Teachers' College (Elementary Certificate 1971). While she taught for a few years, Susan has spent most of her paid working career as an editor, notably at the National Gallery of Canada since 1989 as an editor of art catalogues and the Gallery magazine Vernissage. Recently, she has been working six months each year; she and her husband Ian now spend much of July, August, and September at their summer house on the Bay of Fundy. They have two grown daughters, Aven (m. to Mark Sundaram) and Morel, and a first grandchild, Eric, born 2006.
Susan is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, The Writers' Union of Canada, the Nova Scotia Writers' Federation, PEN (Canada), the Writers' Trust, SOCAN, Access copyright, and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
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[edit] Selected publications
- Pass this way again (with First Draft, 1983).
- Dark Galaxies. (Ouroboros, 1986).
- North/South (with First Draft). (Underwhich Editions, 1987).
- Dangerous Graces: Women's Poetry on Stage (editor). (Balmuir Publishing, 1987).
- Wordmusic (audiotape, with First Draft, 1986).
- The Hummingbird Murders. (Quarry Press, 1992). ISBN 1-55082-048-6.
- Learning to Ride. (Quarry Press, 1994). ISBN 1-55082-104-0.
- Dangerous Times. (audiotape, with SugarBeat, 1996).
- Uncommon Prayer. (Quarry Press, 1997). ISBN 1-55082-196-2.
- Siolence: Poets on Women, Violence and Silence (editor). (Quarry Press, 1997).
- SugarBeat Music & Poetry (CD, SugarBeat 1998).
- Geode Music & Poetry, (CD, Geode, 2000). ISBN 0-9687191-0-4.
- Waging Peace: Poetry and Political Action, editor (Penumbra Press, Manotick, 2002). ISBN 1-894131-37-1.
- La Deriva del Pianeta/World Shift, translations into Italian by Ada Donati (Schifanoia Editore, 2003). ISBN 88-87882-30-4.
- Until the Light Bends (Black Moss Press, 2004). ISBN 0-88753-397-3.
- Until the Light Bends: Geode Music & Poetry, (CD, Pendas Productions, 2004). ISBN 0-920820-70-0.
[edit] Selected anthologies
- Celebrating Canadian Women. Ed. Greta Hofmann Nemiroff (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1989).
- A Room at the Heart of Things. Ed. Elisabeth Harvor (Vehicule, 1999).
- Crossing Boundaries: An International Anthology of Women's Experiences in Sport. Eds. Susan J. Bandy, Anne S. Darden. (Human Kinetics, 1999).
- Line by Line: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry. Ed. and with drawings by Heather Spears (Ekstasis Editions, 2002).
- Nth. Eds. Carolyn Creed, Fred Wah (Sage Hill Fall Poetry Colloquium, 2003).
- The Lunar Plexus. Aut. Penn Kemp (PsychoSpace Sounds, Pendas Productions, 2002). ISBN 1-894715-01-2.
- Two Lips. Aut. Penn Kemp (PsychoSpace Sounds, Pendas Productions, 2001). ISBN 0-920820-35-2.
- Re:Generations: Canadian Women Poets in Conversation. Eds. Barbara Godard, Di Brandt (Black Moss Press, 2005). ISBN 0-88753-393-0.
