Jeramy Dodds won the Trillium Prize for the best book of poetry published in Ontario for his first collection, Crabwise to the Hounds (Coach House Books). Before that, his publisher sent him on a cross-country reading tour, via train, accompanied by fellow poet Matthew Tierney. Uptown had a chance to talk with the pair over hummus and beer.

"It was really great to have the book recognized in Ontario in this manner," Dodds says of the award, "because the majority of images and metaphors included in many of the poems are distillations of my life in the province."

The poems in Crabwise to the Hounds crackle with innovation. Its author says that it can take quite a few months to write one poem.

"But I know it's worth it if I come back to it and I'm still having a good time," he says, "if it's still entertaining me.

"I mean, I want the reader to enjoy it too," he laughs.

The book's final poem, Glenn Gould Negotiates the Danube in the Company of a Raven, is based on a Romani song, mashed up with Gould's recording of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy in D Minor.

"The idea was to create a set of symbols, not unlike guitar tablature, that would aid me in translating the music to English," he says. "I used about 10 sheets of bristol board mounted on a wall, slowed the music down on Cakewalk, and proceeded to jot emotive symbols alongside the recording's timeline to illustrate where and when to use verbs, adjectives, etc.

"I think the experiment might have failed, but I think the outcome is OK."

Matthew Tierney just published his poetry book, The Hayflick Limit (Coach House Books). Scattered throughout it are poems about obscure fears, in tribute to those afflicted with geliophobia (fear of laughter) or aulophobia (fear of flutes) or parelasiphobia (fear of parades).

"Initially, I liked the words as titles," he says. "Then, the fact that there are enough people with these fears to give them names, owning a fear."

He admits to a fear of sharks: "They terrify me but I can't read enough about them." (Fortunately, he lives in Toronto.)

The longest poem deals with the game of chess.

"A chess game starts off perfect," he says. "It's really the one who fails the least who wins the game. Somehow that appealed to me.

"You have to keep all the moves in your head. Writing a poem is like that. You have to keep those words and lines in your head.

"You never get what you want," he adds.

Dodds agrees. "They feel like a huge gamble, every time."