Eleonore Schönmaier is a Canadian poet and fiction writer.
Eleonore Schönmaier is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (2021), Dust Blown Side of the Journey (2017), Wavelengths of Your Song (2013), and Treading Fast Rivers (1999). Wavelengths of Your Song has also been published in German translation as Wellenlängen deines Liedes (2020). Her award-winning poems have been published widely in literary magazines in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including Grain, Arc Poetry Magazine, Prairie Fire, Event, Prairie Schooner, Stand and Magma. Her poetry was chosen for the Academy of American Poets Poem in Your Pocket Day booklet in 2018 and 2020 and for the League of Canadian Poets Poem in Your Pocket Day brochures in 2018, 2019, and 2020 and for Poetry in Motion 2019 (Nova Scotia). Her work is widely anthologized internationally, and her poem "Weightless" was published in Best Canadian Poetry.
Schönmaier has taught advanced fiction writing at St. Mary's University, creative writing at Mount St. Vincent University, and has worked as a writing mentor for the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia. She has won numerous awards, including the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, the National Broadsheet contest, and the Sheldon Currie Fiction Award. American, Canadian, Scottish, Dutch and Greek composers have all written music based on Schönmaier's poetry including Michalis Paraskakis,[1] Carmen Braden and Emily Doolittle.[2] The New European Ensemble,[3] and the St. Andrews New Music Ensemble[4] have performed her poetry in concert.
Dust Blown Side of the Journey is the work of a poet who has mastered her craft...featuring a beautifully elaborate intertwining of images...connections continue from poem to poem...akin to recurring melodies or riffs across distinct movements of a composition...poems both captivating and moving.[5]
The fluidity within the poems [in ''Wavelengths of Your Song''] is matched by the subtle flow between them. The effect is like that of a symphony with interwoven and subtly varied musical statements, and, as in a symphony, the effect is cumulative.[6]
Wellenlängen deines Liedes ist ein großartiges Buch einer ebensolchen Autorin, die es kennenzulernen gilt.[7]