In March, former Stouffville resident Jim Johnstone was awarded second prize in the 2008 CBC Literary Awards for poetry.

Born in 1978, Jim grew up in Stouffville, where his family still lives, and spent much of his early life reading at the library and playing hockey and baseball as a teenager. At the age of seven or eight, he started writing Choose Your Own Adventure stories on his way to school.

“I think that genre helped me bridge the gap between being a reader and aspiring to write myself. In high school I was inspired by comic books and graphic novels, but eventually found myself drawn to poetry in Grade 10. The first poem I can recall reading is Margaret Atwood’s This is a photograph of me. The narrative thrust that Atwood maintains in this poem encouraged my first pieces.”

He studied science in high school before enrolling in the human biology program at the University of Toronto. While at university he continued to write poetry and was first published in Acta Victoriana in 1998. “Publication led to my discovery of an entire literary community in Toronto, and I began to read my peers along with my early influences.”

Until then he had read mostly Canadian poets who wrote in the 1960’s and 70’s. “Earle Birney, John Newlove and Victor Coleman are some of my favourites. However, I began to take poetry more seriously when I realized that there were contemporary writers who actually wrote for a living, and were willing to encourage me. Some of my early mentors were Phlip Arima, Don McKay and Ian Williams.”

After finishing his undergraduate degree he went on to complete a master’s in reproductive physiology. “As a poet I began to publish more frequently, and in some of the more recognized Canadian periodicals such as The Antigonish Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Descant, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Prairie Fire, Prism International etc. Dani Couture, a Toronto writer with an enormous amount of talent, was kind enough to publish my first chapbook, Siamese Poems, on her micropress in 2006. That ended up leading a to full length collection, The Velocity of Escape, which was released on Guernica Editions late last year.”

In 2005, along with Ian Williams and Vicki Sloot, he established Misunderstandings Magazine, a literary publication that focuses on young writers in the Toronto area. “It’s a priority for us to publish at least one unpublished writer per issue. I also run Cactus Press with the Montreal-based writer Devon Gallant.”

Jim entered CBC Literary Awards poetry submissions in 2007 and 2008. “I made the shortlist in 2007, and was shocked to take second prize in 2008. The concept of the contest is what attracted me – it’s the largest blindly vetted literary competition in Canada, and as such it provides all entrants with an equal opportunity to win. Misunderstandings Magazine and Cactus Press were both designed with opportunity in mind, so the theme of the CBC Literary Awards is close to my heart.” 

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