Antony Di Nardo
Antony Di Nardo is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, Forget-Sadness-Grass (Ronsdale Press, 2022). In addition to being a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize, his work has won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Award for best suite of poems and was nominated for a National Magazine Award. Many of his poems appear in journals and anthologies across Canada and internationally, and have been translated into several languages. A former teacher of English and creative writing, he was born in Montreal and lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Author Statement
Three poets converged on my psyche when I was but a pup and left an indelible impression: John Donne, because of his sweeping metaphysics and mastery of form; e.e. cummings, because of his playfulness with language and experimentation; Leonard Cohen, because of his emotional chutzpah and utter lack of sentimentality. As I grew into the art and craft of poetry, influential poets doubled in numbers, then tripled, and now are too numerous to list, although in my greying years giants like James Tate, Mary Ruefle, and Al Purdy continue to inform my work in different ways.
I’ve always been attracted to nature, as much as to the surreal and the absurd, and I believe that like any work of art, “a poem should not mean but be.” So much of what I write tends in that direction, creating a work that is defined by its own internal systems, that is inward looking as much as it relies on its external referents to be appreciated. Language has a built-in wow factor: words are not only signifiers for the seemingly-endless manifestations of the world, but they also come with integrated audio. Words make sounds, and, when I write, those sounds figure as much as the images in my broken lines.
Through Yonder Window Breaks, like my other books, bears testimony to both classical and contemporary influences. Some of these poems shatter glass into a million pieces, others, I believe, do such a fine job of cleaning windows that you can see right through them.
Find “Through Yonder Window Breaks” at: (click image)