Newfoundland poet Maggie Burton is a multi-genre writer, professional violinist, and municipal politician, serving her second term as Councillor at Large for the City of St. John’s. Burton holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Memorial University and has spent much of her career working with the Suzuki Talent Education Program and the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. She was awarded the Riddle Fence poetry prize prior to releasing her debut book of poetry, Chores (Breakwater Books, 2023), which was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and has had two poems previously receive NL Arts and Letters Awards. Prior to Chores, she has had work published in Prism, The Malahat Review, Riddle Fence, Room and elsewhere. Through her poetry, Burton explores the social and physical realities surrounding women’s domestic labour, sexuality, and relationships through a queer, feminist, working class lens. She is currently working on her debut collection of short fiction. Burton writes and lives on the Avalon where she is raising her four young children.
Judges’ Citation
Maggie Burton’s Chores is charming and profound, traditional and inventive.
Maggie Burton’s Chores is charming and profound, traditional and inventive. Its combination of qualities seems effortless but is not only the innate fruit of a vision but the result of skillful poetic design. The book’s detailed, intimate awareness beautifully evokes Newfoundland and expands to our worldwide cultural moment. Burton applies a critique of how we live while embracing life with tenderness and humour. For all the fate, traditional limitation, labour, bitter recognition that chores contain, perhaps the deepest desire of Chores is to fulfill its glimpses of hope beyond mere acceptance: ‘the old harbour was chock solid with seals // and harpoons and I now believe / with all my heart the stirring is true…’
Selected poems
by Maggie Burton
In and out like a lion I hunt by morning
moon and freezer light, like what was seen
by men through fog on frozen floes.
You know sealers hunted in the Narrows?
I scoop out forgotten chicken thighs in shame,
pick blueberries off frost, look for wild
strawberries lost in margarine tubs. My hands,
Spring breaking ice apart, bread in cold soup.
The long and hungry month of March is here.
It’s all the same today, really, the price of cigarettes
being what it is. Learning how to live
alone, I appreciate the constants.
Like those who came before me,
I relish frugality, delight in the necessity
of self-preservation, freeze box-mix
pancakes for later, half-eaten by picky mouths,
syrup-wet backs, soaked so thoroughly
they never thaw. My pancakes died deep
in the freezer, stuck in the ice for months
before anyone noticed, next to the thyme.
Copyright © 2024 by Maggie Burton, Chores, Breakwater Books